LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



>3^Gq 



tt 



Chap.J3..._. Copyright No.. 
81ielf__..Q'_.5. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE QUILLIAN LECTURES, 1898. 



CHRISTIANITY 



AND THE 



AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH; 



OR. 



The Influence of Christianity in 
Making This Nation. 



1^ 



BY BISHOP CHARLES Bp^^ALLOWAY, D.D., LL.D. 



Delivered in the Chapel at Emory College, Oxford, Ga., 
March, 1898. 



Nashville, Tenn.: 

Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 

Barbee & Smith, Agents. 






1120 



/ 



Copyrighted by 

Emory College, Oxford, Ga., 

1898. 




TWO COPIES DECEIVED. 



^^n ^ 




v\ ^^^.^9^ 



398. 



THE QUILLIAN LECTURESHIP. 



On June 4, 1897, the Board of Trustees of Emory 
College, Oxford, Ga., received the following communi- 
cation from Rev. W. F. Quillian : 

To the Board of Trustees of Emory College. 

Desiring to promote the cause of Christian education and to 
advance the theological literature of Methodism, and believing 
that I can most effectively do this by laying the foundation of a 
lectureship at the college of my Church, located at Oxford, Ga., 
I give to Emory College fifty shares of $10 each, of the capital 
stock of the " Country Bank Stock Security Company " (esti- 
mated to be w^orth $550,* the amount I paid for same), to be 
held or sold and reinvested by the Board of Trustees, for the 
purpose of founding a lectureship on the following conditions 
and plan: 

1. This sum, together with any other amounts which may 
be given by myself or others for this purpose, shall be safely 
invested, and the interest added to the principal until the sum 
of $3,000 shall have been reached. But one course of the lec- 
tures may be provided for at an earlier date by special dona- 
tion, provided no part of the principal of this fund shall be 
thus used. 

2. Thereafter the interest, together with any appropriations 
made to this fund from other sources, shall be used for the 
maintenance of a lectureship in Emory College. The lecturer 

* Subsequently this sum was increased to $i,ooo, Dr. Quillian increasing his 
gift to $700 and his nephew, Prof. Marvin C, Quillian, giving $300. 

(3) 



4 Christianity and the American Commonzvealth. 

shall be elected by the Board of Trustees upon the nomination 
of the Faculty, three names being submitted in nomination 
from among the ministers of the Methodist Episcopal 
Churches in the United States, provided, however, that in case 
this fund eventually yields an income of sufficient amount to 
secure the services of a Methodist from any other part of the 
vv^orld, such person shall not be ineligible by reason of his res- 
idence. The lecturer shall be at liberty to choose his ovv^n sub- 
ject or subjects within the range of apologetical, doctrinal, 
exegetical, pastoral, or historical theology. Upon the subject 
thus chosen he shall deliver a course of lectures before the 
Faculty and students of Emory College at such time and 
place as the authorities of the college may designate. When 
delivered, the manuscripts of the lectures shall become the 
property of Emory College, and such profits as may arise from 
the publication of them shall be added to this fund, provided, 
however, if the principal sum of this fund shall ever reach 
$25,000, said profits shall thereafter be added to the general en- 
dowment of the college. 

3. This I do for the glory of God, and as the beginning of 
what I hope in time will grow to large proportions through 
the liberality of others desiring to promote the same ends 
which I have in view, and in laying this foundation-stone in 
this fund I invite benevolently disposed people to consider the 
immense good which has been accomplished by the " Bamp- 
ton Lectures" at Oxford University, and the "Cunningham 
Lectures " of the Free Church College in Edinburgh. 

W. F. QUILLIAN. 

The trust was gratefully accepted by the Board of 



The Quillian Lectureship. 



Trustees, and provision was made to increase the in- 
come from the stock for the first year to the sum of 
$300, and a lecturer for the year 1898 was elected. 
Bishop Charles B. Galloway was chosen, who on 
March 22—27, i^9^5 delivered the lectures of which 
this volume is composed. 



CONTENTS. 

LECTURE I. PAGE 

Religion and Civil Government 9 

LECTURE IL 

The Christian Coming and Character of 
THE Early Colonists 49 

LECTURE IIL 

The Christian Institutions and Laws of 
THE Colonists 95 

LECTURE IV. 
Christianity and the Nation 137 

LECTURE V. 

Christian Education in the American 

Commonwealth 181 

(7) 



LECTURE I. 

Religion and Civil Government. 

(9) 



Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

LECTURE I. 

RELIGION AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

IN accepting the kindly worded invitation of the 
Board of Trustees to inaugurate the series of 
lectures on the Quillian foundation in this historic 
institution, I must first express my high apprecia- 
tion of the ecclesiastical statesmanship and wise 
beneficence displayed by the worthy founder. 
Similar foundations in the great universities of Eu- 
rope and America have become thrones of power, 
and have already made valuable contributions to 
the literature of Christian doctrine and apologet- 
ics. They have enriched the thought and stimu- 
lated the faith of the modern Church. It gave 
me joy, therefore, to hear that a lectureship had 
been established in this college, and my hope is 
that it may take rank with others as a place of au- 
thority in high scholarship and Christian culture. 
And this ardent hope occasioned my extreme re- 
luctance to appear here to-day. Unaffectedly 

(11) 



1 2 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

conscious of my lack of qualification for a service 
of this character, I should have positively de- 
clined but for the terms in which the invitation 
was conveyed. 

The theme chosen for this series of lectures is : 
Christianity and the American Commonwealth; 
or, The Injiuence of Christianity in Making This 
Nation, 

I wish it borne in mind that this is to be in no 
sense a study of Church history. I have no pur- 
pose to trace the growth of ecclesiastical organi- 
zations, or the progress of Christianity in the 
United States. The object of this discussion is to 
ascertain how far the type of religion embraced 
by the American colonists affected and deter- 
mined the character of our civil institutions and 
the course of our social progress. It is not per- 
sonal but civic righteousness with which we 
are immediately concerned; not religion as it 
achieves the salvation of the soul, but religion as 
it exalts the nation ; not so much spiritual as so- 
cial and civil redemption. I shall have little to do 
with the statistics of Churches, and more with the 
constitutions of commonwealths, the statutes of 



Religion and Civil Government. 13 

states, and the history of jurisprudence. Our in- 
vestigation will be along the line of that approved 
statement of Kidd, in his "Social Evolution:" 
** After all, Christianity was intended to save not 
only men but man, and its mission should be to 
teach us not only how to die as individuals but 
how to live as members of society." 

The Christian design lor the world is not '*an 
anarchy of good individuals." They fatally un- 
dervalue the mighty mission of Christianity who 
limit it merely to *'the assertion of moral prin- 
ciple," without any care for its social and political 
results. It contemplates the sanctification of the 
home, the redemption of the nation, the purifica- 
tion of commerce, and the exaltation of civic vir- 
tue. When our Lord announced that his king- 
dom is not of this world, he meant not to say that 
it had nothing to do with the things of this world. 
His mission was to adjust human relations; and 
the enthronement of his gospel in the life of so- 
ciety will right all social wrongs and bring in a 
new heaven and a new earth. The teachings of 
Christ are the perfect solution of all the problems of 
society. Mr. Gladstone, at once a statesman and 



1 4 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

a seer, spoke words of truth and soberness, though 
with spiritual energy, when he said: ''Talk about 
the questions of the day: there is but one ques- 
tion, and that is the gospel. It can and will cor- 
rect everything needing correction." 

And I feel also that an apology is due because 
of the subject selected for these lectures. Though 
the study of history has for years had for me a 
strange fascination, I have no such special ex- 
pert acquaintance w4th its facts or philosophy as 
to entitle me to speak by the authority of accurate 
and ample knowledge. The exacting and labo- 
rious duties of my responsible office, necessitating 
wearisome travel at home and abroad, and bereav- 
ing me of the delightful privileges of a library for 
weeks at a time, afford little opportunity for pros- 
ecuting any definite line of investigation. I can 
only hope, therefore, to offer some suggestions 
that may stimulate other students to fully explore 
a much-neglected field. 

To the study of this subject I have been im- 
pelled by the evident tendency of some modern 
historians to minify, if not almost entirely elimi- 
nate, religion from the formative forces of our 



Religion and Civil Government, 15 

American institutions. Books on the making of 
our nation have been written, and are the texts in 
our colleges, in which the Christian religion, as a 
social and civil factor, has only scant or apologet- 
ic mention. This is either a fatal oversight or a 
deliberate purpose, and both alike are to be de- 
plored and condemned. A nation ashamed of its 
ancestry will be despised by its posterity. What- 
ever use or misuse we may make of our inherit- 
ance, it is well to be reminded from whence it 
came. We ought to know the genesis of our in- 
stitutions, though we may have to lament their ex- 
odus. With the growth of a subtle materialistic 
spirit which invades every department of life, how- 
ever sacred and secret, we are threatened with an 
undervaluing or ignoring of the great moral and 
spiritual forces that constructed the massive frame- 
work of this mighty nation. Climatic, economic, 
racial, and purely political forces are analyzed 
and properly classified; but the religious factor, 
which more than either or all of them determined 
the character of our civilization and the form of 
our government, has received very indifferent, if 
not malevolent, consideration. All of which con- 



1 6 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

firms the judgment of a distinguished writer who 
has recently observed that '*the place of religion 
in human history is too often the subject merely of 
ecclesiastical or antiecclesiastical declamation, or 
else, through fear of giving offense, it is left se- 
verely alone." 

Now, with the hope of contributing somewhat 
to the arrest of that tendency, and of aiding the 
students of this honored institution to a broader 
study of the earlier history of this American com- 
monwealth, I have timidly ventured upon the 
theme of these lectures. My purpose shall be, if 
possible, to demonstrate that Protestant Christian- 
ity has been the dominant influence in our na- 
tion's construction and continuation. For I hes- 
itate not to affirm that the temple at Jerusalem 
was built by a no more sacred patriotism or under 
the benedictions of a no more favoring Providence 
than were the colonial governments of this New 
World. Christian teachings were the seed- 
thoughts of our political constitutions, and Chris- 
tian evangelism was the inspiration of American 
colonization. If we eliminate from our national 
history the direct and all-powerful influence of the 



Religion and Civil Government. 17 

Christian religion, we have nothing left but a set 
of disjointed facts without significance, dry and 
dreary annals without parentage or posterity. 
But, on the other hand, a right apprehension of 
all the formative forces in our national life will 
vindicate the matured judgment of Emerson, that 
** our whole history appears like a last effort of 
Divine Providence in behalf of the human race.'' 
Now, as introductory to this study of our ear- 
lier American history, and in order to get a van- 
tage point from which to take the most satisfac- 
tory observations, I shall speak to-day on the gen- 
eral subject of Religion and Civil Government. 
My contention will be that the governments and 
civilizations of all people are typed and deter- 
mined by the character of their religions. And 
this proposition will hold good whether the relig- 
ion be true or false. The deepest and mightiest 
thing in any nation's heart is its religion; there- 
fore as is the religion so is the nation. ** The 
kingdom of heaven is within you," some one once 
quoted to Frederick Maurice. **Yes," he re- 
plied, " and so is the kingdom of England.*' And 
to every true American we may say, ''And so is the 



1 8 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

republic of the United States. ' ' Now if this discus- 
sion shall prove to be a demonstration, the appli- 
cation of these clearly ascertained principles to 
our American commonwealth will account for the 
history and reveal the true philosophy of our so- 
cial and civil institutions. 

There is an intimate, a vital connection between 
the spiritual and political faiths of a people. As 
God hath joined them together, they can not be 
put asunder. So intimate indeed is this relation 
that the dominance of the one determines the char- 
acter of the other. The heavens and the earth 
are in immediate and vital relation. And no peo- 
ple can have politically a new earth until they 
have first had spiritually a new heaven. On this 
point the distinguished Dr. Fairbairn has thus 
spoken: ** Political and religious thought are' so 
organically related that each is but the form of the 
other. Political thought is the religious idea ap- 
plied to the state and the conduct of its public af- 
fairs, while religious thought is but our view of the 
polity of the universe, and man's relation to it. It 
follows that as man thinks in the one field he comes 
to think also in the other." But I should go far- 



Religion and Civil Government. 19 

ther, and say that a man's thinking in the political 
field is invariably, if not necessarily, determined 
by his convictions in the spiritual field. In the 
realm of the civil, as in the ecclesiastical, the old 
aphorism holds good: *' Like priest, like people." 
The state is a true reflex of the Church; the 
civil law is a faithful rescript of the canon law. 
And, as in the days of the Hebrew theocracy, so 
in all lands and under all religions, there is a 
close connection between the sanctuary and the 
seat of judgment. The altar shapes the throne, 
the character of the crozier measures the strength 
of the scepter. Out ^f religious doctrines are de- 
veloped political principles; and, therefore, the 
purer the religion the broader a nation's constitu- 
tion and the wiser its civil polity. Religion is a- 

i 

political force as well as a spiritual influence;? 
both a social dynamic and a celestial inspiration. 
With a slight modification I accept the statement 
of Prof. Seeley: **From history we learn that 
the great function of religion has been the found- 
ing and sustaining of states." And in language 
quite as emphatic that accomplished student on 
another occasion expressed the same critical judg- 



20 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

ment as follows: '*Look almost where you will 
in the wide field of history, you find religion, 
wherever it works freely and mightily, either giv- 
ing birth to and sustaining states, or else raising 
them up to a second life after their destruction." 
And even the skeptical but philosophically acute 
and observant Rousseau, himself a political leader 
and social reformer, gives assent to the same great 
doctrine in these strong words: '•''Never was a 
state founded that did not have religion for its 
basis y 

All the civil institutions of the ancient world 
were the outgrowth of religious belief, the social ex- 
pressions of a spiritual faith. Nations were gov- 
erned as the gods directed. Kings ruled, judges 
delivered opinions, soldiers fought, generals 
planned their campaigns, all under the patronage 
and supposed guidance of their favorite deities. 
Oracles were consulted, shrines were reverently 
visited, and costly sacrifices freely offered, in or- 
der to secure the approval of the gods before any 
movement was undertaken. The Roman Empire, 
whether pagan or Christian, from Romulus to 
Charlemagne, ** never dreamed of executing its 



Religion and Civil Government. 21 

functions without a divinity." **The Greek 
king," as a distinguished scholar has said, ** pro- 
nounced his decisions as judge by inspiration from 
Themis. The Roman king learned the elements 
of legislation from the nymph Egeria." The 
Mohammedan power, swift and terrible as an ava- 
lanche, and cruel as death itself, " made religion 
the most vigorous element in its administration, 
civil and military." And the history of the He- 
brew nation teaches with powerful emphasis and 
endless iteration the imminence of their God. 
*'The theocracy in Israel," as Canon Freemantle 
well says, " was the righteous God abiding in the 
nation. The theocracy in Christendom was to be 
the same righteous power abiding in mankind." 

Heathen and Christian alike, in all ages of the 
world, have regarded religion as the basis of the 
commonwealth, as the very condition of national 
existence. Those were remarkable words uttered 
by Plutarch, one of the greatest and purest disciples 
of Plato: '* There never was a state of atheists. 
You may travel all over the world, and you may 
find cities without walls, without king, without 
mint, without theater or gymnasium; but you will 



2 2 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

nowhere find a city without a God, without prayer, 
without oracle, without sacrifice. Sooner may a 
city stand without foundations than a state with- 
out belief in the gods. This is the bond of all so- 
ciety and the pillar of all legislation." All his- 
tory attests the fact that religion is not only a help- 
ful influence, but that it is the most potential factor 
in a nation's life. Governments could not exist 
without its cohesive and undergirding power. 
Their steadiest support would be withdrawn, their 
mightiest bulwark dismantled. And all far-see- 
ing rulers, without regard to their own personal 
feelings or opinions, have not failed to take this 
fundamental fact into account. Speaking of re- 
ligion as a national force, as *'the mystery of so- 
cial order," Napoleon said: *' One can not govern 
without it; otherwise the repose, dignity, and in- 
dependence of the nation are disturbed at every 
moment." And in historic support of the doc- 
trine here announced, this great master of state- 
craft further observed: ''In the Roman republic 
the senate was the interpreter of heaven, and this 
was the mainspring of the force and strength of 
that government. In Turkey, and throughout the 



Religion and Civil Government. 23 

Orient, the Koran serves as both a civil and relig- 
ious Bible. Only in Christianity do we find the 
pontificate distinct from civil government." 

Lord Erskine, England's great constitutional 
lawyer and forensic orator, in prosecuting a man 
charged with high crime, thus referred to the co- 
hesive power of our Christian religion: ** Depend 
upon it, the world can not be held together with- 
out morals ; nor can morals maintain their station 
in the human heart without religion, which is the 
corner-stone of the fabric of human virtue." And 
the distinguished Chief Justice of this great state 
of Georgia, the Hon. Joseph H. Lumpkin, has 
with equal eloquence and force applied the same 
principle to our American commonwealth: ** Ban- 
ish the Bible from the land, or, w/zat is the same 
thing, succeed in loosing its hold on the public 
mind, and my word for it, the experiment of self- 
government will prove a failure." 

Political atheism will inevitably produce polit- 
ical anarchy. For a nation, as for an individual, 
it is better to have a bad god than no god at all. 
Kishub Chunder Sen, of India, showed himself a 
genuine philosopher when he uttered this distress- 



24 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

ful apprehension: **I fear for my countrymen 
that they will sink from the hell of heathenism into 
the deeper hell of infidelity." A nation without a 
God is a nation without a conscience ; and a na- 
tion without a conscience knows no rule of right 
but might, perverts law into license, and makes 
authority the bitter synonym of cruel tyranny. 
On this point the late lamented and learned Dr. 
Philip Schaff spoke these wise words of warning; 
**The destruction of religion would be the de- 
struction of morality and the ruin of the state. 
Civil liberty requires for its support religious lib- 
erty, and can not prosper without it." And David 
Hume, skeptic though he was, yet an impartial 
historian and philosopher, did not hesitate to make 
this candid affirmation: *' If you find a people 
without religion, rest assured that they do not dif- 
fer much from the brute beasts." But this pro- 
found political principle, which is slowly working 
out its predestined results in the history of nations, 
long ago had more authoritative announcement than 
any opinion of uninspired man, in these words of 
the prophet Isaiah: **The nation and the king- 
\ dom that will not serve thee shall perish." 



Religion and Civil Government. 25 

A striking modern illustration of the doctrine 
for which I am now contending we have in the 
"Reign of Terror" in France, that bloodiest 
chapter in the history of a land of revolutions and 
counter-revolutions. Blatant infidelity precipi- 
tated that storm of pitiless fur}^ The National 
Assembly passed a resolution deliberately declar- 
ing ** There is no God; " vacated the throne of 
Deity by simple resolution, abolished the Sabbath, 
unfrocked her ministers of religion, turned tem- 
ples of spiritual worship into places of secular 
business, and enthroned a vile woman as the God- 
dess of Reason. Now, instead of larger liberty 
and wiser laws and more perfect peace and 
greater commercial and industrial prosperity, the 
days of anarchy and terror had just begun. That 
very night the storm burst, and the streets of the 
world's fairest city ran red with the blood of the 
proudest chivalry of France. What a verification 
is that sad history of the eloquent words of Lord 
Macaulay: ''Whoever does anything to depre- 
ciate Christianity is guilty of high treason against 
the civilization of mankind." 

It now bfecomes necessary to examine some- 



26 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

what into the civilizations of people living under 
different religions in order to ascertain how far 
the principles here announced are verified by the 
facts of history. If my contention is true, we shall 
discover that civil governments and their admin- 
istration differ as their religions differ. That 
which so powerfully affects the inner life must of 
necessity determine the outer form of society. 

It would be most instructive, if the limits of this 
discussion allowed, to make an extended study of 
the pagan civilizations of certain countries ante- 
dating the Christian period, and then note the 
changes wrought by the coming and dissemina- 
tion of the religion of the Man of Galilee. Those 
marvelous changes were not mere coincidences, 
but the effects of mighty causes potential in the 
gospel. In a few centuries the spiritual teachings 
of the Nazarene dethroned the gods of great na- 
tions, revolutionized the social life of many peo- 
ples, shifted the shadings on the map of the world, 
and marked the rise and fall of empires. In spite 
of persecutions long and bitter, in face of legisla- 
tion malignant and merciless, armed only with 
spiritual weapons, the Church moved forward to 



Religion and Civil Government. 27 

glorious conquest. "Those were times of awful 
agony," says the historian, ** the two years of De- 
cius, the ten yea-rs of Diocletian, when the Roman 
Empire, shutting the gates of the amphitheater, 
leaped into the arena face to face with the Chris- 
tian Church. When those gates were opened, 
the victorious Church went forth with the bap- 
tism of blood on her saintly brow, bearing a new 
Christian empire in her fair, white arms." But it 
will be amply sufficient for the purpose of this ar- 
gument to examine existing civilizations and con- 
trast their dominant forces. 

And at the very outset of this investigation 
one broad generalization may be clearly made: 
Xhe governments of all non-Christian countries 
are desfotic. Whatever the cause, this is the 
historic fact, and a fact written in blood and 
tears. It is a logical and spiritual necessity. 
A tyrannous religion produces a political des- 
potism. Without spiritual liberty there can be 
no civil freedom. Dr. Dennis, in his master- 
ly and voluminous work on ** Christian Mis- 
sions and Social Progress." after a critical and 
exhaustive survey of the entire field, makes this 



28 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

strong statement: *' The history of heathenism is, 
as a rule, marked by despotism. The old oriental 
empires and their modern successors are alike in 
this respect. Savage life has been almost inva- 
riably characterized by tyranny on the part of 
the rulers." And in referring especially to those 
ill-fated lands under Moslem rule Archbishop 
Trench makes a like sweeping declaration. He 
claims that **the despotisms of the East are not 
accidents, but the legitimate results of the Koran; 
and so long as this exists as the authoritative book 
nothing can come in their stead." Its political 
supremacy has been a soulless tyranny, wielding 
a scepter of iron and waving a flag of flame. The 
civilizations of Japan, China, and India are the 
social and political expressions of their ancient 
religions. They have molded the thought, con- 
trolled the legislation, and directed the public pol- 
icies of those vast empires through dreary and 
weary centuries. In none of them is there any 
conception of the great doctrine of personal lib- 
erty, and only in modern Japan is there an ap- 
proach to civil and constitutional rights. And a 
like condition of things obtains in the little "her- 



Religion and Civil Government. 29 

mit nation" of the East. The government of Ko- 
rea, in the judgment of a native Korean, is *' a com- 
bination of despotic monarchy and corrupted oli- 
garchy, with the worst elements of both." Its 
whole machinery is run in the interest of the few- 
est people at the cruel cost of the nation. Civil 
oppression, without even a show of justice, was 
the habit of centuries, and the only hope of the 
superstitious masses. And to whatever pagan 
land we turn, the same sad story is heard, a story 
of heartless tyranny and suffering slaves. The 
'' demon-ridden islands" of the sea, and the dark 
continent of Africa, with its fetishism and name- 
less idolatries, only swell the orphan cry of hu- 
manity, the weird wail of the millions for that 
freedom which comes only to those who know the 
emancipating power of the truth as it is in Jesus. 

Only in Christian countries do we find liberal 
and representative government. There autocra- 
cies give way to republics, and royal decrees to 
statutes and constitutions. The old fable of the 
divine right of kings surrenders to the sovereignty 
of the people and the reign of constitutional law. 
I quote again a fine passage from the distinguished 



!>■> 






yi; 



30 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 



^^y ^i 



J''^ ^Dr. Fairbairn : '* If you want political freedom, it 
is to states that have known what it was to believe 
in the Christian religion that you must go. You 
must go to Holland, as she issues purified from 
her baptism of blood, strengthened in her faith and 
ennobled in her spirit by the unequal yet victo- 
rious struggle against Spain; you must go to 
England as the Puritans made her; you must go 
to Scotland as she was made by John Knox; you 
must go to America, so largely formed, organized, 
and governed by the sturdy Puritan men of New 
England and the mild, inflexible Friends and the 
stalwart Presbyterians of Pennsylvania. And un- 
derneath all you find that the grand, dominant 
factors are the religious ideas, the faith that came 
through Jesus Christ." 

The social and. political force of any religion is 
measured by the estimate it puts upon l/ie individ- 
ual and the family. The religion that enthrones 
man and sanctifies the home, builds the strongest 
state, with the surest guarantees of enduring and 
increasing glory; but, on the other hand, the re- 
ligion that undervalues the individual and secular- 
izes the home, that disregards personal rights and 



Religion and Civil Government. 31 

debases family relationships, of necessity exalts 
the state into a despotism, degrades the citizen into 
a mere slave, and breeds immoralities that sooner 
or later accomplish its ruin. A nation is strong" in 
proportion as man is respected as a sovereign and 
protected in his rights; a nation is pure in pro- 
portion as the sanctities of the home are properly 
appreciated and safeguarded. 

I shall first, therefore, seek to ascertain what 
place man holds in the world's great religions, and 
discover thereby the character of civilization that 
has been built about him. Every religion must 
be measured by the man it produces. As is the 
man so is the religion, and as is the religion so is 
the nation. I accept without qualification the 
strong statement of Humboldt, that ** govern- 
ments, religion, property, books, are nothing but 
the scaffolding to build man. Earth holds up to 
' her Maker no fruit like the finished man." 

In all non-Christian countries manhood is more 
or less debased, and human life is cheap. The 
doctrine that the state must guarantee the protec- 
tion of life is purely a Christian conception. 
Kings have put citizens to death to gratify person- 



32 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

al revenge, without other authority than their own 
wills. Dr. Fairbairn states the whole case in a 
few words: *'The great notion in all ancient em- 
pires was that the king or the priest owns the peo- 
ple. The idea of man as a conscious, rational, 
moral individual, of worth for his own sake, of 
equal dignity before his Maker, did not exist in 
antiquity till it came into being through Israel.'* 
And that fatal misconception of humanity, distin- 
guishing all non-Christian religions and nations, 
accounts for the heartless atrocities that so often 
shock the civilized world and redden the pages of 
history. 

A critical and philosophical student of com- 
parative religions, in estimating their working 
forces upon individual life and character, has 
made an analysis which I think eminently correct 
and just. He finds in Buddhism a paralyzed per- 
sonality, in Confucianism an impoverished person- 
ality, in Hinduism a degraded personality , and in 
Mohammedism an enslaved personality. 

On the other band, Christianity teaches that 
every man is a sovereign. It exalts the individual, 
places the crown of a king upon every human 



Religion and Civil Government. 33 

brow, and the crozier of a priest in every human 
hand. Christ tells us there is nothing greater 
than manhood. In commenting upon the fact 
that Jesus Christ put value upon man himself, 
apart from possession or position, James Russell 
Lowell said he was* 'the first true democrat that 
ever breathed.^' 

A -paralyzed -personality is the legitimate and nec- 
essary product of the Buddhist creed. Buddha 
hated life and preached a gospel of annihilation. 
His aim was to make men know their misery, that 
they might willingly escape therefrom. His ulti- 
mate and hopeless end was a state of non-exist- 
ence. The sum of his teaching may be thus ex- 
pressed : 

" Know that, whatever thou hast been, 
'Tis something better not to be." 

To Buddha the highest life was in seclusion, the 
renunciation of the common duties of home, so- 
ciety, and state. Buddhism makes '* celibacy the 
loftiest state and mendicancy the highest idea of 
life." It has little provision for the great organic 
institutions of society. The striking contrast be- 
tween the spirit of Buddhism and Christianity has 



34 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

been sharply drawn by the scholarly Bishop of 
Ripon: ** While Buddha cries * Retire,' Christ 
cries 'Advance.' While Buddha cries * Reduce 
the powers of affection and happiness,' Christ 
bids us live fully, enlarging our capacities, strength- 
ening while elevating our affections. The end 
which Buddha points to is the cessation of suffer- 
ing; the end which Christ proposes is the perfec- 
tion of character." Now out of this religion of 
despair, this petrified pessimism, what may we ex- 
pect but a man of degraded spirit, without high 
purpose or lofty ambition or daring enterprise or 
aggressive courage? And history has not disap- 
pointed the dreary expectation. Look at China, 
a land of heavy slumber and darkness, for which 
there can be no awakening until it is proclaimed 
by Christianity's mighty angel of the resurrection. 
From Confucianism we have an impoverished per- 
sonality. Confucius said he was " a transmitter, 
not a maker." He taught that religion was re- 
flection. He opposed progress. He abhorred 
everything new as untrue. He taught nothing 
with regard to man's relation to God, He 
said: ** The part of wisdom is to attend care- 



Religion and Civil Government. 35 

fully to our duties to men, and, while we respect 
the gods, to keep aloof from them." The car- 
dinal doctrine of his creed was the worship of an- 
cestors. Now, from such lifeless, spiritless phi- 
losophy and religion we can only expect an im- 
poverished manhood. It has nothing on which to 
develop stalwart virtues and imperial manliness, 
nothing to stimulate noble aspiration or to satisfy 
the divine hunger of the deathless soul. These 
doctrines, transmuted into the thought and life of 
the Chinese people, have sterilized the whole na- 
tion, and reduced that naturally great power into 
the plaything and spoil of other governments. 

The combined influence of Buddhism and Con- 
fucianism has produced the civilization of China. 
It has been compared to Lot's wife, a hardened, 
stiffened figure, with its face ever toward the 
changeless past. China sits forever by the grave. 
Her only ambition is to emulate the dead, her ho- 
liest worship is to dwell among the tombs. No 
wonder she is stationary. There is no future but 
the past. Departure from old customs is a nation- 
al crime, variance from the ways of the sages an 
unpardonable sin. A true picture of this vast na- 



3^ Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

tion is a figure sitting before the tablets of the dead ; 
a giant of massive mold and immense capabilities, 
but a paralyzed and impoverished personality. 

The contribution of Hinduism to society is a 
degraded -personality. This is the necessary prod- 
uct of the caste system, which is the distinguishing 
feature of the Hindu faith. It suppresses the 
development of individuality and independence of 
character. Administered as it is with Draconian 
severity, it brutalizes the conscience and destroys 
all moral distinctions. A man may commit mur- 
der and not lose caste, but receiving a glass of 
water from the hands of a European would be a 
mortal sin, the forfeiture forever of all social dis- 
tinction or recognition. It eradicates human sym- 
pathy, annihilates compassion, hardens the heart, 
and intensifies selfishness. Outside the caste the 
weal or woe of a fellow -man makes no im- 
pression, excites not the least concern. Pity for 
the low caste is unknown, and measures for 
their relief would be a contamination. No won- 
der a distinguished Parsee scholar, while contem- 
plating the degraded and hopeless condition of 
the Pariah outcasts, exclaimed: '*0 Caste, thou 



Religion and Civil Government. 37 

inexorable tyrant, what hope is there for India 
while thy Juggernaut wheel is grinding man's best 
nature out of him?" 

Under this system there can be no social unity, 
no national sentiment, no esfrit de cor^s, no co- 
hesive power. Caste has developed social tyran- 
ny and erected family and personal barriers that 
have necessarily weakened the state. No wonder, 
therefore, that the great Indo- Aryan race has be- 
come the easy prey of invading nations. Buckle, 
in his "History of Civilization," has in these 
graphic words given a faithful picture of that land 
cursed by caste: '*It is not surprising that, from 
the earliest period to which our knowledge of In- 
dia extends, an immense majority of the people, 
pinched by the most galling" poverty, and just 
living from hand to mouth, should always have re- 
mained in a state of stupid debasement, broken 
by incessant misfortune, crouching before their 
superiors in abject submission, and only fit either 
to be slaves themseves or to be led to battle to 
make slaves of others." 

And, in addition to this cruel caste, the hideous 
idolatries of Hinduism can only produce a de- 



3^ Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

based and debauched manhood. No people can 
rise higher than their conceptions of the gods 
they worship. Debased deities make degraded 
votaries. Look at some of those horrid fig-ures 
before which the superstitious Hindu slavishly 
bows. There is the stone image of Vishnu, with 
four arms, riding on a creature half bird, half 
man, or else sleeping on a serpent. There is 
Siva, a monster with three eyes, riding naked on 
a bull, with necklace of skulls for an ornament. 
There is Kartekeya, the god of war, with six 
faces, riding on a peacock, and holding bow and 
arrow in his hands. There is Ganesa, god of 
success, with four hands and an elephant's head, 
sitting on a rat. There is Goddess Kali, with flow- 
ing hair reaching to her feet, with a necklace of 
human heads, her tongue protruded from her 
mouth, and her girdle stained with blood. Be- 
fore such forbidding creatures, with elaborate and 
horrid rites of worship, it is impossible for the soul 
to have pure and noble aspirations. The product 
of Hinduism can only be a degraded -personality. 
India's sad story has been told by Matthew Ar- 
nold in these despairing lines: 



Religion and Civil Government. 39 

On that hard pagan world, disgust 

And secret loathing fell, 
Deep weariness and sated lust 

Made human life a hell. 

Now, in contrast with this degrading system, 
the ennobling virtues of the Christian reHgion are 
thus described by a distinguished native of India, 
a Parsee scholar: "On the other hand, one need 
not be a Christian himself to be able to see that 
Christianity has tended powerfully to humanize 
one of the least human of the races of men. In 
its essence it ought to exercise a threefold influ- 
ence: to humanize, to liberalize, to equalize. 
This, to me, is a very great achievement. Other 
religions have their special merits, but none of 
them claims to have rendered this threefold serv- 
ice to the race." 

Mohammedanism has produced an e7islaved per- 
sonality. *' Its Koran demands intellectual sla- 
very; its harem requires domestic slavery; its 
state implies and enforces both a religious and a 
civil slavery." The Koran puts a premium upon 
war, offering the highest rewards to those who 
slay the greatest number of infidels. Mohammed's 



40 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

cardinal principle, that the end justifies the meanSj 
consecrated every form of deception and lying, 
and encouraged every sort of persecution and vio- 
lence; commercial confidence is almost unknown, 
and hence there are few banks and business 
partnerships. The citizen is the slave of the 
state; he has no rights to be respected. Mo- 
hammedanism is an absolute despotism, the most 
gigantic engine of intolerance and persecution 
the world ever saw. There is a proverb which 
says: ''Where the Turkish horse sets its hoof 
the grass never grows." The Turkish horse is 
the synonym of the Turkish government, which 
is the political expression of the Moslem religion. 
In every land swept by this heartless despotism it 
has left a tale and trail of blood. Its simple touch 
is a blight. Commerce languishes, then decays; 
harvests cease, and then the fields become barren 
as the uncovered rocks of the eternal hills. All 
history attests the atrocious verity. A glance at 
Mohammedan nations will recall the facts of this 
mournful story. But, while the shrieks of dying 
Christians in Armenia still linger in our ears — 
dying by the cruel edge of the Turkish swords, 



Religion and Civil Government. 41 

wielded by Turkish slaves, and in order to propa- 
gate the Moslem faith— we may well veil from 
our eyes the desolations of Mohammedan gen- 
erations. 

By the side of these developments of character 
let us place the Christian conception of manhood. 
The dignity and individuality of man, with per- 
sonal, inalienable rights, and entitled to the lar- 
gest freedom consistent with the rights of others, 
is the ** exclusive legacy of Christianity to human- 
ity." In no land untouched by the Christian relig- 
ion has such a conception ever obtained. The doc- 
trine of equality of citizenship — equality in privi- 
lege unaffected by possession or position — is only 
another form of our Lord's declaration that **A 
man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
things which he possesseth." Every human soul 
has an intrinsic value. Christianity alone has 
heard and answered the anxious prayer of human- 
ity, voiced in these lines: 

" O Freedom, deepen thou a grave, 
Where every king and every slave 
Shall drop in crown and chain, 
Till only man remain." 



42 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

And Christ has brought to the world the blessed 
doctrine of the brotherhood of man — a brother- 
hood that *' involves an equality of rights on the 
one hand, and a sovereignty of duty on the 
other." Belief in many gods is irreconcilable 
with the doctrine of a common humanity. Max 
Miiller tells us that the word *' mankind" never 
fell from the lips of Socrates or Plato or Aristotle. 
** Where the Greeks saw barbarians, we see 
brethren; where the Greek saw nations, we see 
mankind." 

After a critical examination of the influence of 
the Roman empire in promoting national unity. 
Von Humboldt said: *'But the feeling of com- 
munion and unity of the whole human race, 
and of the equal rights of all its families, is de- 
rived from a nobler source. It is founded upon 
deeper motives of the mind, and upon religious 
convictions. Christianity has assisted most pow- 
erfully in promoting the idea of the human race: 
it has acted beneficially in rendering man more 
human in his manners and institutions. The idea 
of humanity is interwoven with the earliest Chris- 
tian doctrines." 



Religion and Civil Government. 43 

Religions, as social and political factors, are 
also differentiated by their injluence ufon tkefafn- 
ily. A religion that fails to purify the home is 
powerless to elevate the nation. The corner-stone 
of the commonwealth is the hearthstone. The 
state is but the enlargement of the family; or, as 
Prof. Woodrow Wilson happily phrases it, ** State 
is family writ large." And as woman is head of 
the home, a nation is no better than its women. 
If they are ignorant and depraved, the family will 
be impure and the nation debauched. In all non- 
Christian lands there are no homes, only houses. 
Women are looked upon as slaves or animals. 
The family life is debauched. The harem is the 
scene of bitter jealousies, fierce hostilities, and 
nameless debaucheries. A missionary once asked 
a Mohammedan woman how she felt when a sec- 
ond wife came into the house. She smote upon 
her breast and said : ' ^Fire here — -fire in the heart J' ' 
Out of such houses of shame and sorrow can not 
be developed the virtues that construct great na- 
tions and give glory to empires. For those schools 
of national character we must look to Christianity, 
which seeks to make every home as sacred as the 



44 Christianity and the American Commonzvealth. 

shrine of a temple and every woman as pure as 
the bride of Christ. 

In his great work on the ''Divine Origin of 
Christianity, Indicated by Its Historical Effects," 
Dr. Storrs thus eloquently refers to woman's in- 
debtedness to the ennobling influences of the Chris- 
tian religion: "The tendency of Christianity al- 
ways has been, while recognizing the sex in souls, 
to give to woman larger opportunity, more effect- 
ive control of all instruments for work : to put her 
side by side with man in front of all the great 
achievements — in letters, arts, humanities, missions 
— as at the majestic south portal of Strasburg ca- 
thedral the figure of Sabina, maiden and architect, 
faces the figure of Erwin von Steinbach ; and though 
the old traditions of law are hard to change, the 
entire movement of modern society is toward the 
perfect enfranchisement of the sex to which the 
religion brought by Jesus gave at the outset pre- 
eminent honor." 

Christianity has also given the world a new law 
of international comity^ and has brought the na- 
tions of earth into closer fellowship. The historian 
Lecky has well said: ''Christianity has never 



Religion and Civil Government. 45 

been an enemy to national feeling, though she has 
infused into Christendom a bond of unity which 
is superior to the divisions of nationhood." The 
great and beneficent fabric of international law is 
the direct product of the Christian religion. It 
comes from the doctrine of universal brotherhood : 
that all nationalities, however distant and diver- 
gent, are members of a higher spiritual family, and 
that as the spirit of kinship is enthroned the pos- 
sibility of wars and blood will be reduced. Ed- 
ward Everett paid this generous tribute to our 
holy religion in his review of the great work by 
Grotius: *'The foundations of his immortal trea- 
tise on the law of nations are laid in the scriptures 
of the Old and New Testaments, and the original 
conception of the work was in the genuine spirit 
of Christian philanthropy." 

And its mission of peace on earth and good 
will to men continues with increasing success. It 
has introduced the doctrine of arbitration for the 
settlement of international controversies, and is 
daily decreasing the occasions for strife. If it 
has not yet made wars to cease on the earth, it has 
greatly mitigated their barbarities, and some day 



4^ Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

will usher in that cloudless morning which Alfred 
Tennyson saw in a vision, when 

The M^ar-drums will throb no longer, and the battle-flags be 

furled, 
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world. 

This study might be profitably extended into a 
comparison of Protestantism, and I^omanis?n, in 
their effects upon the civilization of the world. 
Not all so-called Christian nations are alike. 
They are separated widely, radically, sometimes 
fatally. The distinguishing doctrines of Chris- 
tianity may be variously interpreted, and held with 
different degrees of spiritual intelligence and mor- 
al honesty. So Christian nations differ from each 
other, not so much from climatic and traditional 
reasotis, but because of variant and even diver- 
gent conceptions of the cardinal principles of 
Christianity. These differences are not attribu- 
table to race, climate, or nationality. The cleav- 
age is along the line of religion. Sons of the same 
blood, heirs of the same promise, have built differ- 
ent civilizations under the same sun and on the 
same soil. All history attests the truth of Lord 



Religion and Civil Government. 47 

Macaulay's eloquent words: " Whoever passes in 
Germany from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant 
principality, in Switzerland from a Roman Cath- 
olic to a Protestant canton, in Ireland from a Ro- 
man Catholic to a Protestant county, finds that he 
has passed from a lower to a higher grade of civ- 
ilization. On the other side of the Atlantic the 
same law prevails. The Protestants of the United 
States have left far behind them the Roman Cath- 
olics of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The Roman 
Catholics of Lower Canada remain inert, while 
the whole continent around them is in a ferment 
with Protestant activity and enterprise." 

But the limits of this lecture will not allow a 
more extended comparison. The story of one 
country is substantially the history of all others. 
Romanism sterilizes ; Protestantism vitalizes. The 
one is adapted to a feudal state ; the other creates 
a free commonwealth. 

And now the sum of all this discussion is elo- 
quently stated by Wendell Phillips in these words : 
"The answer to the Shasters is India; the an- 
swer to Confucianism is China; the answer to 
the Koran is Turkey; the answer to the Bible is 



48 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

the Christian civilization of Protestant Europe 
and America." To which Rev. Dr. W. J. R. 
Taylor very properly offers this important amend- 
ment: ''The answer to Romanism is Spain and 
Mexico; and the answer to atheism is the Reign 
of Terror in France and the Commune in Paris." 



' -^^~^.^-. 



LECTURE II. 



The Christian Coming and Character of the Early 

Colonists. 

4 (49) 



LECTURE II. 

THE CHRISTIAN COMING AND CHARACTER OF 
THE EARLT COLONISTS. 

THE general principles discussed in the first 
lecture — the influences of religion upon civil 
government — must now be applied to the colonial 
period of American history. We will ascertain, 
if possible, how far those great basal principles 
find illustration and verification in an analysis of 
the formative forces of our vast republic. From 
broad generalizations we proceed to historic ap- 
plication. 

In the former lecture it was sought to be shown 
that religion was the determining and dominant 
factor in all civilizations, and, therefore, the purer 
the religion the higher the civilization and the 
wiser the civil government. In illustration of this 
doctrine the civilizations of Christian and non- 
Christian countries were contrasted, resulting in 
the triumphant vindication of Christianity as the 
mightiest political influence and social dynamic 
known to the history of the world. Comparison 
was also instituted betv/een Protestantism and Ro- 

(51) 



52 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

manism as civilizing and national forces, revealing 
the fact that our Protestant faith is the social hope 
of the world, the only true friend of freedom, the 
only redeemer of nations, the only palladium of 
civil liberty, the only wise master-builder of per- 
manent empires. 

It ought, therefore, to be an occasion of un- 
ceasing gratitude to every American patriot that 
this mighty continent was colonized by Protestant 
England rather than by Catholic France and 
Spain ; that the early rulers of America were the 
sturdy sons of a pure Protestantism and not the 
fanatical votaries of an effete Romanism. When 
Columbus, steering west, and nearing the shores 
of an undiscovered world, saw a Hock of land- 
birds toward the south, he changed his course to 
follow their flight, and gave to Spain the West In- 
dies Islands. But for those winged messengers of 
the wilderness, guided, it may be, by a favoring 
Providence, the great voyager would have come 
directly to the shores of Carolina, and this mag- 
nificent country, so distinctly Protestant and pow- 
erful, might have become the sterile land of an 
unprogressive Catholic civilization. Instead of a 



The Early Colonists. 53 

vigorous, aggressive nation, this might have been 
another pitiable South American repubHc, scourged 
with poverty and treachery. Instead of the home 
of Magna Charta, it might have been the land of 
the guillotine and the Inquisition. 

It is a suggestive fact that the first bloodshed 
in America by Europeans was prompted by Ro- 
man Catholic fanaticism. The ferocious assas- 
sins who led in the massacre were accompanied 
by twelve Franciscans and four Jesuits, who gave 
them the benedictions of the Church. A com- 
pany of humble, brave-hearted Huguenots fled 
from persecution in France, and, crossing the At- 
lantic, formed a little colony near the mouth of the 
St. Johns River, in Florida. But the presence of 
these harmless heretics excited Spanish alarm and 
hate, so the next year (1565) an expedition was 
fitted out under the command of the distinguished 
Pedro Melendez, ** a bigot, who could conceive 
of no better manifestation of love to God than 
cruelty to man, when man was heretical." The 
helpless colony was cruelly invaded and all swung 
to the trees, with this inscription written under- 
neath: " Hung as heretics, and not as Frenchmen." 



54 Christianity and the American Commonzvealth. 

So America's first tragedy was a new St. Barthol- 
omew's day, the heartless expression of Catholic 
casuistry and cruelty. Well would it have been 
for Spain in that early time if she had been able to 
hear and heed the philosophic and wise counsel of 
some leader like her own Emilio Castellar of to- 
day. ** National freedom," says this Spanish 
statesman, '*can be won only by pacific means. 
Soldiers are as unfit to build the temple of freedom 
as the warrior David was to build the temple of 
God. Those who depend upon the sword shall 
perish by the sword." 

Had the early colonists of America come from 
other lands, impelled by other motives and in- 
spired by another religious faith, the results 
would have been vastly different. The brilliant 
history of the American commonwealth could 
never have been written. The grand doctrines 
that have been wrought into the vast framework 
of this great republic were incarnated in the colo- 
onists. Their everlasting principles have become 
our magnificent institutions. **Our nation, in its 
greatness to-day, is nothing more than the oak 
which has sprung from the acorn which they plant- 



The Early Colonists. 55 

ed." Such a nation could only have been born 
of a sturdy Protestant faith. The Declaration of 
Independence could never have been penned by a 
man, or adopted by a people who accepted the 
doctrines and were dominated by the principles of 
a papal hierarchy. It has a Protestant inspiration. 
But these and other great historic facts will be 
clearly developed in the process of this discus- 
sion. 

I invite you in this lecture to a study of the 
early colonists^ their motives^ character , and -prin- 
ciples. For the magnificent history of our coun- 
try we are indebted more than anything else to 
what the eloquent Sergeant S. Prentiss called 
the ^^ awful virtues of our pilgrim sires." We 
will therefore most reverently inquire who they 
were, what principles they embraced and taught, 
and whither and when and why they came. It 
will be found, I doubt not, that religion was the 
controlling motive of their coming and the divine 
purpose of their remaining. **With this," as 
Bancroft says, *'the wounds of the outcast were 
healed and the tears of the exile sweetened." 

Indeed, long before the days of permanent col- 



5 6 Christianity and the American Commonwealth 

onization we find this ardent religious purpose di- 
recting all westward movements. It characterized 
and largely controlled the period of discovery. 
It was alike regnant in Catholic and Protestant. 
Sails were set in the name of the cross as well as 
the crown, and lands were claimed both for the 
Church and the king. But in asserting that relig- 
ion was the primary motive of American discov- 
ery, I do not overlook or undervalue other deter- 
mining forces. Maritime enterprise, commercial 
greed, political ambition, and territorial expansion 
exercised the full measure of their power in speed- 
ing the ships that swept the Western seas in search 
of unseen continents. ''Avarice and religious zeal 
were singularly blended." 

In the national art gallery of Mexico there is a 
magnificent portrait of Christopher Columbus. 
He is a young man, with the pale face of a stu- 
dent, and wearing an expression of seriousness 
deepening to sadness, as though in his heart some 
long-unrequited hope were about to die. He is 
sitting on a rock that juts out into the sea, and is 
peering thoughtfully over the restless waves, while 
maps and charts are spread out before him, and in 



The Early Colonists, 57 

one hand is a much-used compass. Before that 
busy brain visions of far-off unknown lands had 
already passed, and upon that burdened young 
soul had been rolled the holy mission of their dis- 
covery. The sadness that shadowed his fair 
brow came from the inadequate means at com- 
mand to fulfil the sublime prophecies of his great 
soul. That picture, the work of a master, fitly 
represents the scientific and spiritual beginning of 
this great Western empire. 

Columbus was a man of deep piety, and con- 
sidered himself the *' called of God." He felt, as 
his name '* Cv^r/stopher" implied, that in an im- 
portant sense he was a '* Christ-bearer." On one 
occasion he said: ** God made me a messenger of 
the new heavens and the new earth." To his rev- 
erent mind his voyage of discovery was little less 
than a missionary journey. His last act in the 
Old World and his first in the New were solemn 
acts of worship. The last note in the Old was a 
prayer, the first in the New a song. Before 
launching out to sea the holy communion was cel- 
ebrated in a temporary chapel at Palos, and so 
soon as they landed on the island which the great 



5^ Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

discoverer himself named San Salvador, a cross 
was erected, and the Gloria in Eoccelsis was sung 
with loud voice, waking with its swelling cadences 
the deep silence of a wilderness soon to become a 
new world. 

On his second voyage Columbus was accompa- 
nied by twelve priests and a vicar apostolic, with 
a solemn charge from Queen Isabella to give spe- 
cial spiritual attention to the natives. Other ex- 
peditions rapidly followed, each under immedi- 
ate ecclesiastical benediction and patronage and 
armed with papal authority to take possession of 
new countries in the name of 'Hhe Churchy the 
queen and sovereign of the world. ' ' By the pope's 
*'bull of partition," loyal Catholic nations were 
to parcel out and possess the New World. 

And a like missionary purpose dominated, more 
or less, the daring enterprise of English voyagers. 
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a favorite at the court of 
Queen Elizabeth, who led several expeditions over 
the seas, claimed to be filled ''with nobler aims 
than finding ore of gold." His chief ambition, 
he declared, was ''the honor of God, the com- 
passion of poor infidels captivated by the devil," 



The Early Colonists. 59 

and to *' discover all such heathen lands as were 
not actually possessed by any Christian prince or 
people." And the same announced purpose en- 
tered more or less into the daring and ambitious 
plans of Capt. John Smith, Sir Walter Raleigh, 
and other adventurous sailors over the, as yet, un- 
charted ocean. 

But before discussing the period of permanent 
colonization I pause for a moment to consider a 
historic fact v^hich has been called a '• prodigy of 
Divine Providence." The vjhen of the coming of 
the colonists is not less significant than the whither 
and the why. 

The providential planting of the American na- 
tion is most manifest in the ti7ne appointed for the 
movement to begin. An earlier or a later date 
would have written for us a different history. 
*'The hour of American colonization was the 
fittest one, in all modern times, for the New World 
to receive the best which the Old World had to 
give." It had a connection in time and spirit with 
the Reformation that was more than a fortunate 
coincidence ; it must have been a special and wise 
providence. For, as the great Dr. Dorner has 



6o Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

reverently observed, *^ a new land arose out of the 
sea to serve as a bulwark and a reserve for the 
Church of the Reformation." And on the other 
hand, God seems to have restrained the spirit of 
western migration until the forces of the Reforma- 
tion had wrought a spiritual and political revolu- 
tion in Europe, and had become sufficiently strong 
to lay the foundations of a new empire on the other 
side the seas. ** That was high strategy in the 
warfare for the advancement of the kingdom of 
God in the earth." 

When Columbus touched the shores of San 
Salvador Luther was a child only nine years old. 
All Europe was yet under ecclesiastical and civil 
bondage to the Church of Rome. The papacy 
was still supreme in Church and State. True, the 
forces of revolt were slowly forming, but they 
were waiting for a leader. The dying voice of 
John Huss was echoing over the continent. Across 
the channel, Wyclif's English Bible was grad- 
ually working the overthrow of ecclesiastical and 
political despotism. His scattered ashes only 
symbolized the triumphant spread of the doctrines 
he so fearlessly preached in life. Thus a way 



The Early Colonists, 61 

was being prepared for another " prophet unto the 
nations," and in the fulness of time he came. 
The child grew to stalwart manhood, and the 
humble monk became the intrepid and masterful 
leader of a movement that had '^centuries in its 
history." From a cloister came this divinely ac- 
credited apostle, an open Bible in his hand, girded 
with power, and armed with pen of fire and tongue 
of flame. He stirred to its stillest depths the slum- 
bering conscience of nations. His words were 
battalions, and his doctrines mightier than dis- 
ciplined armies. Soon every iron crown became 
uneasy, and almost every throne began to totter. 
And so it came to pass that " the entire sixteenth 
century was a period of universal disturbance." 

I am sure Guizot limited too narrowly the tre- 
mendous results of the Reformation when he as- 
serted that it had little effect politically, but that it 
** abolished and disarmed the spiritual power, the 
systematic and formidable government of thought." 
It was more than an emancipation of mind ; it was 
a political, a national, and international revolution. 
It was the birth of a new and holier patriotism, 
the beginning of a larger and freer national life. 



63 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

From it came a broader conception and a bolder 
assertion of popular rights. Liberty became the 
world's watchword. The old fable of the divine 
right of kings began to give way to constitutional 
governments.* 

The Reformation wrought the emancipation and 
exaltation of the State. It abolished the false dis- 
tinction between the sacred and the secular, and in- 
vested magistrates with responsibilities and functions 
as sacred as those of priest or apostle. An early 
reformer insisted that ** the distinction between 
ecclesiastical and profane laws can find no place 
among Christians." They were not to have two 
consciences, one for the State and another for the 
Church, but were to be alike loyal to a divine in- 
tegrity in discharging both the high functions of 
citizens and churchmen . The Reformation brought 
the principle of religious liberty **from the region 
of abstract speculation, in which it had been born, 
into the field of practical politics, where it had no 
existence." 

The colonization of North America, whether 
enterprised by Protestant England or Catholic 
France and Spain, was more of a rehgious inspi- 



The Early Colonists, 63 

ration than a commercial ambition, a scheme of 
spiritual propagandism rather than of territorial 
aggrandizement. Many m.otives doubtless prompt- 
ed the coming of the colonists, but the greatest of 
them all was religion. The earliest in the field 
were the Spanish and the French. Though 
strangely restrained by conditions at home, they 
did push their American conquests with much 
courage and religious zeal. In the South and on 
the Pacific coast the Spanish planted themselves, 
and advanced far into the interior. The French 
settled along the St. Lawrence, and sought to for- 
tify stations down the entire length of the Missis- 
sippi Valley. And everywhere they were guided 
and commanded by the authority of the Church. 
The king of Spain said: *' The conversion of the 
Indians is the principal foundation of the con- 
quest." The French advanced their schemes of 
colonization and conquest, chanting the hymn, 

"The banners of heaven's King advance; 
The mystery of the cross shines forth." 

Bancroft says: "It was neither commercial en- 
terprise nor royal ambition which carried the pow- 



64 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

er of France into the heart of our continent: the 
motive was religion. Religious enthusiasm col- 
onized New England, and religious enthusiasm 
founded Montreal, made a conquest of the wilder- 
ness on the upper lakes, and explored the Missis- 
sippi." In all the French and Spanish possessions 
'*not a cape was turned nor a river entered but a 
Jesuit led the way." Cardinal Richelieu issued 
the decree that " everybody settling in New France 
must be a Catholic." 

But all those magnificent schemes of empire 
were doomed to humiliating failure and almost 
utter extinction. Like a dream as one awaketh, 
the splendid vision faded away. Only a few som- 
ber monuments of French and Spanish dominion 
remain to remind us of America's providential es- 
cape from the iron grasp of a medieval civilization. 
The issue was finally settled — an issue involving 
the fate of this continent — on the stormy heights 
of Abraham. The fall of Quebec was the rise of 
the American republic. The defeat of Montcalm 
was the triumph of personal and civil liberty, of 
the habeas corpus and free inquiry. The victory 
of Wolfe was the overthrow of civil and ecclesias- 



The Early Colonists, 65 

tical despotism. And so **this echo of the mid- 
dle ages" passed away. 

It was religion that also promoted the colonial 
settlements established by the sturdy and liberty- 
loving Protestants. The Virginia colony, the first 
established by the English in North America, was 
an avowed measure of religious propagandism. 
The first charter prescribed their mode of worship, 
and, in the royal instructions given, the adventu- 
rous colonists were '*to provide that the true word 
and service of God be preached, planted, and 
used, not only in the said colony but also as 
much as might be among the savages bordering 
upon them, according to the rites and doctrines of 
the Church of England." And one of the char- 
tered reasons assigned for the Jamestown grant 
was that the colony, '' under the providence of Al- 
mighty God, might tend to the glory of his Di- 
vine Majesty in propagating the Christian religion 
to such people as yet live in darkness and miser- 
able ignorance of the true knowledge and wor- 
ship of God." The first house built after their 
arrival was a place of worship. Their first penal 
laws were adopted, as was declared, '*to aid the 



66 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

colonists in keeping a good conscience . ' ' And when 
Sir Thomas Dale, the new governor, arrived in 
1611, he came furnished with a body of ^^aws, 
divine, moral, and martial." When the first leg- 
islative assembly met, in 1619, the Church was es- 
tablished by law, and it was enacted that the year- 
ly salary each clergyman should receive from his 
parishioners was fifteen hundred pounds of tobac- 
co and sixteen barrels of corn, estimated to be 
worth about two hundred pounds. Each male in- 
habitant over sixteen years of age was taxed, for 
this purpose, ten pounds of tobacco and one bush- 
el of corn. In 1624 the colonial assembly further 
enacted that on every plantation *'a house or 
room'' shall be provided for public worship, and 
attendance upon church service was made com- 
pulsory. Thus we see how a fervent religious 
purpose determined the establishment of the Vir- 
ginia colony. Of the politico-ecclesiastical ques- 
tions involved in this and other colonial settle- 
ments much will be said in a later discussion. 

The Plymouth colony, which landed thirteen 
years after the Jamestown settlement, was projected 
in order better ''to practise the positive part of 



The Early Colonists. 67 

Church reformation and propagate the gospel in 
America." No devout souls ever made more 
honest spiritual preparation for the holy worship 
of the sanctuary than did these noble pilgrims 
prayerfully perfect their plans to establish a home 
and new empire in this western wilderness. A 
solemn fast was observed, then the holy com- 
munion was celebrated, and, after a farewell ad- 
dress from the apostolic pastor, Rev. John Rob- 
inson, the * 'Mayflower" turned her prow toward 
these far-off shores. With prosperous winds and 
the guiding Eye which is above storm and billow, 
the little vessel in due time hailed the heights 
where in the name of God a new banner was un- 
furled under the open heavens. 

In the cabin of the ''Mayflower," anchored off 
Cape Cod, the Plymouth colonists gathered sol- 
emnly around a table, drew up a ** compact," and 
organized themselves into '' a civil body politic." 
This was signed by all the male heads of families 
and the unmarried men not attached to families 
thus represented. That historic document reads 
as follows : 

** In the name of God, Amen. We whose names 



68 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread 
sovereign lord, King James, by the grace of God, of 
Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender 
of the Faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory 
of God and advancement of the Christian faith and 
honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant 
the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, 
do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in 
the presence of God and of one another, cove- 
nant and bind ourselves together into a civil body 
politic, for our better ordering and preservation, 
and furtherance of the ends aforesaid, and by vir- 
tue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such 
just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitu- 
tions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be 
thought most meet and convenient for the general 
good of the colony: unto which we promise all 
due submission and obedience. In witness where- 
of we have hereunder subscribed our names, at 
Cape Cod, the nth of November, in the year of 
the reign of our sovereign lord. King James, of 
England, France, and Ireland the eighteenth, 
and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini 
1620.'' 



The Early Colonists, 69 

This, by the way, was the first effort of Amer- 
ican colonists to frame a constitution, and out of 
this grew the more elaborate fundamental law 
on which this mighty nation is so securely built. 
The dominant purpose, it is seen, was *'to ad- 
vance the Christian faith," and, free from the 
fierce persecutions which they had suffered so 
long, to build a nation in which the conscience 
should be unfettered and the free worship of God 
guaranteed. The combined missionary and pa- 
triot spirit which impelled their coming is thus 
expressed by the eccentric and eloquent colonial 
preacher, Cotton Mather: **In coming to the new 
continent they were influenced by a double hope : 
the enlargement of Christ's kingdom by the con- 
version of heathen tribes, and the founding of an 
empire for their own children in which his relig- 
ion should gloriously prevail." 

The colony of Massachusetts Bay was project- 
ed with the same religious purpose and the same 
divine ideal. The Plymouth Company, *'for the 
purpose," says Dr. Baird, in his ''Religion in 
America," '' at once of providing an asylum for 
persons suffering for conscience' sake in the Old 



70 Christianity and the American Commomvealth. 

World, and of extending the kingdom of Christ 
in the New," sold a vast belt of land to a number 
of English gentlemen. That was the origin of the 
'* colony of Massachusetts Bay." John Win- 
throp, the accomplished young governor of the 
colony, on the occasion of leaving the shores of 
England, thus gave expression to the elevated 
piety of the brave company in a letter to his fa- 
ther: *'I shall call that my country where I may 
most glorify God and enjoy the presence of my 
dearest friends. Therefore herein I submit my- 
self to God's will and yours, and dedicate myself 
to God and the company with the whole endeav- 
ors both of body and of mind." And, after em- 
barking. Gov. Winthrop and others drew up a 
humble request for prayer in their behalf, ad- 
dressed '*to the rest of their brethren in the 
Church of England." Immediately after landing, 
a day of solemn fasting and prayer was appointed, 
and was reverently devoted to the worship of God 
under the wide-spreading trees of the unbroken 
forest. They felt that '* nothing could be really 
or permanently prosperous without religion." 
The colonial seal of Massachusetts in 1628 had 



The Early Colonists. 71 

the device of an Indian, with this motto in his 
mouth: ^^Co7ne over and help us."' 

The colony of Connecticut was settled in 1623, 
and upon the very spot where the city of Hartford 
now stands. ''They too," says Dr. Baird, "car- 
ried the ark of the Lord with them, and made re- 
ligion the basis of their institutions." The solemn 
compact then adopted, and afterward expanded 
into their constitution, contained the liberal polit- 
ical principles that yet obtain in that common- 
wealth. 

The New Haven colony was founded shortly 
afterward, with Rev. John Davenport as spiritual 
teacher. Their first Sabbath was spent in relig- 
ious worship under an oak-tree, the faithful pas- 
tor preaching on the Saviour's "temptation in the 
wilderness." After a day of fasting and prayer 
they laid the foundation of their civil government 
by covenanting that "all of them would be or- 
dered by the rules which the Scriptures held forth 
to them." 

The Rhode Island colony was founded in 1636 
by Roger Williams, the apostle of "soul-liberty" 
and the champion of civil rights. Unrestricted 



72 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

freedom of conscience and opinion was guaran- 
teed. One writer speaks of *'the organization of 
the community on the unheard-of principle of ab- 
solute religious liberty combined with perfect civil 
democracy." In the compact of 1640 that doc- 
trine was reaffirmed in these word: *'We agree, 
as formerly hath been the liberties of this town, so 
still, to hold forth liberty of conscience." And a 
distinguished professor of Brown University says : 
**To this day the annals of both city and state 
have remained unsullied by the blot of persecu- 
tion." 

The Maryland colony was planted by Lord 
Baltimore, a Roman Catholic, under whose wise 
and liberal administration it rapidly and greatly 
prospered. The earliest law of Maryland pro- 
vided that ** no person within the province, pro- 
fessing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall be in any 
way troubled, molested, or discountenaced for his 
or her religion, or in the free exercise thereof." 
Generous praise has been given the Catholic gov- 
ernor of this American colony for his large relig- 
ious toleration, and it has been severely contrast- 
ed with the proscriptive, intolerant, persecuting 



The Early Colonists. 73 

spirit of the New England Puritans. But, while 
detracting nothing from the high character and 
splendid qualities of the noble governor, it should 
be remembered that the liberal charter of the col- 
ony was granted by Protestant England. 

But time would fail me to relate the story of 
each struggling colony. They were all born of a 
common purpose, impelled by a common impulse, 
and sustained by a common hope. Indeed, so 
prominent and dominant were the religious prin- 
ciples and scruples of the fathers, that Frederick 
Maurice characterized the colonies as '* sect-com- 
monwealths," connected by their religious con- 
victions and peculiarities. What Dr. Baird has 
so generously said of early New England may be 
properly applied to all the colonies: **To their 
religion the New England colonists owed all their 
best qualities. Even their political freedom they 
owed to the contest they had waged in England 
for religious liberty, and in which, long and pain- 
ful as it was, nothing but their faith could have 
sustained them. Religion led them to abandon 
their country rather than submit to a tyranny that 
threatened to enslave their immortal minds; and 



74 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

made them seek in the New World the freedom 
of conscience that was denied them in the Old." 
The coming of the colonists was hastened by 7'e- 
ligious persecution. They were refugees for con- 
science' sake. Indeed, the noted Dr. Increase Ma- 
ther, in 1695, went so far as to declare that hut 
for the persecutions of Old England there would 
not have been a New England. The story is a 
chapter of horrors. When in 1633 Laud was 
made Archbishop of Canterbury, persecutions be- 
came more cruelly systematic and extreme. Every 
possible indignity was heaped upon the non-con- 
formists. Occasions for their humiliation and 
degradation were made with fiendish inventive- 
ness. He prohibited the importation of small 
pocket Bibles from Geneva, which had been pop- 
ular with the people. Laymen by hundreds were 
excommunicated for not kneeling when they re- 
ceived the communion. He ordered every min- 
ister to read from the pulpit a declaration in favor 
of Sunday sports. The story is told of one cou- 
rageous spirit who read the declaration, and then 
the Ten Commandments, after which he said: 
"You have heard the commands of man and the 



The Early Colonists. 75 

commands of God. Obey which you please." 
King James himself said: *'I will make them 
conform, or hurry them out of the land." Per- 
secution became so fierce in England that a dis- 
tinguished Puritan statesman on the floor of the 
House of Commons exclaimed: *' Danger enlarges 
itself in so great a measure that nothing but 
Heaven shields us from despair." 

And on the continent the struggle against an 
unfettered conscience and the pure worship of 
God gathered strength for a new onset. The rev- 
ocation of the edict of Nantes inaugurated another 
reign of terror for the long-suffering Huguenots. 
Thousands died by fanatical violence, and iDther 
thousands fled from their home and country in 
disguise and under cover of night, seeking an 
asylum among those who had less religion but 
more piety and humanity. 

While the storm was thus beating in pitiless 
fury upon these seemingly hopeless but ever-fear- 
less friends of a true religion, the way of escape 
to America was opened. In that darkest hour of 
the struggle for constitutional and religious lib- 
erty the westward migration began. ** Through 



7^ Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

scenes of gloom and misery," says Bancroft, ''the 
Pilgrims showed the way to an asylum for those 
who would go to the wilderness for liberty of con- 
science. Enduring every hardship themselves, 
they were the servants of posterity, the benefac- 
tors of succeeding generations." 

John Norton, of Boston, in a letter to the re- 
stored King Charles II., tells the pathetic story of 
one people, which was the history of all: *'Our 
liberty to walk in the faith of the gospel with all 
good conscience, according to the order of the 
gospel, was the cause of our transporting our- 
selves, with our wives, our little ones, and our 
substance, from that pleasant land over the At- 
lantic Ocean, into this vast wilderness. . . . We 
could not live without the public worship of God, 
nor be permitted the public worship without such 
a yoke of subscription and conformity as we could 
not consent unto without sin. That we might, 
therefore, enjoy divine worship free from human 
mixtures, without offense to God, man, and our 
consciences, we, with leave, but not without tears, 
departed from our country, kindred, and fathers' 
houses, into this Patmos." 



The Early Colonists. 77 

I come now to speak somewhat more particular- 
ly of the quality and qualifications of the men 
who laid the foundations of the American Com- 
monwealth. In nothing is the hand of God more 
distinctly seen than in the character of the early 
colonists. Mighty men they were, of iron nerve 
and strong hand and unblanched cheek and heart 
of flame. God needed not reeds shaken by the 
wind, not men clothed in soft raiment; but he- 
roes of hardihood and lofty courage to be the 
voice of a new kingdom crying in this Western 
wilderness. And such were the sons of the mighty 
who responded to the divine call. Bishop Hurst 
says: ** With some exceptions they were the 
wheat of the Old World. Unlike many of our 
recent immigrants, they came to make here their 
permanent homes. They cut the last ties that 
bound them to the elder civilization, and entered 
heart and soul, for life or death, into the struggle 
of this new and rising land. Besides, they were 
religious men, swayed by religious principles, who 
feared God, and him only. They were men of 
intelligence, far-sighted, who had been trained in 
the rough discipline of an age that tried men's 



7^ Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

souls, and they were thus able to lay broad and 
deep the foundations of a republic whose corner- 
stones are freedom and law." 

The Independents, who had to flee from Eng- 
land and take refuge in Holland, resolved at 
length to make their permanent home in the New 
World. Inured to hardships, accustomed to 
struggles for life and the means to sustain life, in- 
spired with an undaunted courage born of simple 
faith in God, they were eminently fitted for the 
perils of pioneers, and to be the brave builders of 
a new nation in the wilderness. Their heroic and 
apostolic minister, the Rev. John Robertson, thus 
spoke affectionately of his flock soon to be dis- 
persed abroad: **We are well weaned from the 
the delicate milk of the mother country, and in- 
ured to the difflculties of a strange country. The 
people are industrious and frugal. We are knit 
together as a body in a most sacred covenant of 
the Lord, of the violation whereof we make great 
conscience, and by virtue whereof we hold our- 
selves strictly tied to all care of each other's good, 
and of the whole. It is not with us as with men 
whom small things can discourage." 



The Early Colonists. 79 

Their rugged virtues and austere morality were 
needed for those trying times. Only soldiers who 
could endure hardness were able to brave the 
dangers of a wilderness life. They were indus- 
trious, self-denying, abstemious, and rigidly con- 
scientious. Their convictions were strong and 
their purposes inflexible. Of the same blood and 
faith, they had the steady nerve and sustained 
courage of Cromwell's ironsides. To them the 
Bible was everything: "the source of religious 
principles, the basis of civil law, the supreme au- 
thority in matters of common life." With the ex- 
ception of the colony of Lord Baltimore all were 
Protestants, and, as Dr. Dorchester properly char- 
acterizes them, were '* men of stern and lofty 
virtues, invincible energy, and iron wills — the fit- 
ting substratum on which to build great states." 
They brought with them the sublime conviction, 
afterward so forcefully stated by that great Puri- 
tan teacher and epic poet, John Milton, that ** the 
Bible doth more clearly teach the solid rules of 
civil government than all the eloquence of Greece 
and Rome." 

And what may we not say of the .Quakers, and 



8o Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

of our heirship in their splendid virtues and simple 
manner of life ? The very name is a synonym for 
rugged honesty and uncompromising integrity. 
They were the embodiment of civic righteousness. 
Their unswerving contention was for equal and 
perfect political privilege. And for peace they 
would almost go to war. Carlyle's quaint estimate 
of George Fox may also serve as a fit characteri- 
zation of his great disciple and friend, William 
Penn, who brought to America the divine princi- 
ples of an ideal civilization. He says: ** The 
most remarkable incident in modern history is not 
the Diet of Worms, still less the battle of Auster- 
litz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other battle, but 
George Fox making himself a suit of leather. 
This man, the first of the Quakers, was one of 
those in whom the divine idea is pleased to mani- 
fest itself and, across all the hills of ignorance, 
shine in awful and unspeakable beauty. He is a 
highly accredited prophet of God." With a spirit 
just as heroic, a purpose just as pure, and a cour- 
age just as undaunted, William Penn led an expe- 
dition to this Western world ; and here, with others, 
planted the seed from which this mighty nation 



The Early Colonists. 81 

has grown. He came as an apostle of God, with 
these words upon his lips: "God in Christ has 
placed a principle in every man to inform him of 
his duty and to enable him to do it." Thoroughly 
imbued with the democracy of Christianity — that 
we are all brothers of one blood in Christ — he 
even addressed King Charles II., on one occasion, 
as "Friend Charles." And so he came across 
the seas as a sort of incarnated Declaration of In- 
dependence. An eloquent utterance of his sounds 
as though it might have been spoken in an after- 
time, on the floor of the Continental Congress: 
'*Any government is free when the people are a 
party to the laws enacted." 

In Penn's address, inviting persons to join his 
colony far over the Atlantic, he used this language, 
worthy of a broad-minded Christian and far-seeing 
statesman: "I purpose, for the matters of liberty, 
that which is extraordinary — to leave myself and 
successors no power of doing mischief, that the 
will of one man may not hinder the good of a 
whole country. It is the great end of government 
to support power in reverence with the people and 
to secure the people from abuse of power; for lib- 



82 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

erty without obedience is confusion, and obedience 
without liberty is slavery ^ The Quakers of Nevv^ 
Jersey drew up a solemn compact, in which it is 
expressly declared: ''^We put the -power in the 
feophy And in their code of ** Concessions and 
Agreements " may be found the germ of the Amer- 
ican constitution. And wherever these God-fear- 
ing, simple-minded people found a dwelling-place 
they stood for freedom of conscience and worship 
and for the largest personal and civil liberty. 
Against every form of oppression—everything that 
erected a barrier between brothers and citizens — 
they protested with the vehemence of profound 
conviction. Whittier has given the story of a 
Quaker girl at Salem, condemned to exile, in de- 
fault of paying a fine of £io for not attending the 
Puritan Church. When the sheriff proposed to 
the captain of a vessel to take the condemned 
maiden to the Barbadoes, the poet made the old 
hero of the sea respond as follows : 

Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins of Spanish 

gold, 
From keel-piece to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold ; 
Bj the living God who made me, I would rather in jour bay 
Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child away. 



The Early Colonists. 83 

That stern old commander of the waves must 
have been a spiritual and political son of George 
Fox and William Penn. Out of such sturdy stuff 
came the heroes of the revolution and the builders 
of the republic. 

Of the Huguenots^ and our national indebted- 
ness to their rich blood, and pure faith, and sus- 
tained courage, and mechanical ingenuity, and 
tireless industry, and habits of economy, I might 
speak at undue length. They have contributed 
much that is best and most enduring in our Amer- 
ican civilization, and from them have come many 
of the greatest statesmen and jurists who adorn 
our country's brilliant annals. 

What a history of storm and sorrow had those 
brave French reformers ! From the massacre of 
St. Bartholomew under Charles IX. to the revo- 
cation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV., they 
were the objects of suspicion and pitiless persecu- 
tion by both royal and ecclesiastical despots. 

As the stanch advocates of free conscience, free 
speech, and free worship — of the divine principles 
of civil and religious liberty — the Huguenots were 
considered dangerous alike to the monarchy and 



§4 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

the papacy. So the Jesuit cry rang out: ** Crush 
these things out of the rehgion of the Huguenots ! 
Crush out the Huguenots themselves T^ For two 
hundred years not a synod of their Church could 
be held, but their faith never faltered and their 
hope never died. In secret they worshiped their 
Lord, and on the home altar the holy fires of sac- 
rifice never ceased to burn. Every private house 
became a spiritual temple where the law of the 
Lord was read and expounded. And thus through 
two weary centuries these pious patriots prayed 
and waited for a day of deliverance. 

But when the final blow came in the revocation 
of the edict of Nantes, the remnant of blood, 
probably five hundred thousand, were compelled 
to flee the country. Many came to the American 
colonies, and found hospitable welcome. They 
scattered over New York and the New England 
section, but '' a warmer climate was more inviting 
to the exiles of Languedoc," and so they went 
southward into the Carolinas. Thus it was that 
South Carolina especially became the **home of 
the Huguenots," those holy and heroic exiles who 
fled from fagot and fire to find a peaceful place in 



The Early Colonists. 85 

which to worship God. I know of no more beau- 
tiful picture, spiritual and idyllic, than Bancroft's 
pathetic description of those early saints on the 
w^ay to their devout and joyous Sabbath conven- 
ticles. A few passages can not be withheld: 
*' There it was that the Calvinist exiles could cele- 
brate their worship without fear, in the midst of 
the forests, and mingle the voice of their psalms 
with the murmur of the winds which sighed among 
the mighty oaks. Their church was at Charles- 
ton. They repaired thither every Sunday from 
their plantations, which were scattered in all direc- 
tions on the banks of the Cooper. They could be 
seen, profiting by the tide, arriving by families in 
their light canoes, preserving a religious silence 
which was alone interrupted by the noise of their 
oars and the hum of that flourishing village which 
was watered by the confluence of two rivers." 

Better citizens no nation ever had than these 
pious sons of beautiful France. It has been said, 
to the credit of their rare virtues and pure home 
life, that very few of their descendants have ever 
been arraigned for crime before the courts of the 
country; and Henry Cabot Lodge has affirmed 



86 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

that ''in proportion to their numbers, the Hug-ue- 
nots produced and gave to the republic more men 
of ability than any other." 

Mrs. Sigourney, in whose veins flowed the finest 
Huguenot blood, chanted this prayer for her peo- 
ple, in which all America can devoutly join: 

On all who bear 

Their name or lineage may their mantle rest: 
That firmness for the truth, that calm content 
With simple pleasures, that unswering trust in 
Trial, adversity, and death, which cast 
Such healthful leaven 'mid the elements 
That people the New World. 

** Your own state of Georgia was colonized," 
says Dr. Baird, " expressly as an asylum for im- 
prisoned and persecuted Protestants;" and Dr. 
Bacon says, "• No colony of all the thirteen had a 
more distinctly Christian origin than this." God- 
ly Moravians from Germany, devout Churchmen 
and pious Puritans from England, brave High- 
landers from Scotland, the heroic Salzburgers 
from their beautiful Alpine homes, and others, 
found cordial welcome here from " the good Ogle- 
thorpe, one of the finest specimens of a Christian 
gentlemen of the Cavalier school." Of these, 






The Early Colonists. ^7 

probably the most interesting and least known 
were the Salzburgers, and yet their Georgia colony, 
Bishop Hurst affirms, furnishes ** one of the most 
remarkable records of a patient, pure, and uncom- 
plaining religious body in the whole history of the 
Christian Church." They were descended from 
the Waldenses. Driven from Austria because of 
their religious faith, they sought refuge in Protes- 
tant lands. Invited by the trustees of the Georgia 
colony, a large number reached these shores and 
settled near Savannah. John Wesley found these 
Salzburgers ^* among his warmest supporters," 
and from them Whitefield received generous 
assistance in building his historic Orphan House. 
Sturdy, industrious, brave, liberty-loving, their 
virtues are worthy of all emulation and their 
names of everlasting honor. One of their favorite 
hymns is a fair expression of their devout spirit 
and purpose. What it lacks in poetry is sup- 
plied in pathos and piety: 

" I am a wretched exile here — 
Thus must my name be given. 
From native land and all that's dear, 
For God's word, I am driven. 



88 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

Full well I know, Lord Jesvis Christ, 

Thy treatment was no better: 
Thj follower I now will be: 

To do thj will, I'm debtor. 

Henceforth a pilgrim I must be. 

In foreign climes must wander: 
O Lord, mj prayer ascends to thee, 

That Thou my path will ponder." 

But of the coming and character of others I can 
not, in the limits of this lecture, speak at length. 
Much should be said of the honest-hearted Hol- 
landers, the founders of New York, who were in 
advance of all Europe in the struggle for civil lib- 
erty, who gave to England herself the first Eng- 
lish Bible, the work of Miles Coverdale, print- 
ing it at Antwerp, and who for a long period led 
the world's commerce on the high seas. They 
imported and reestablished those principles in the 
New York colony; and on Manhattan Island, 
which they purchased from the Indians for twenty- 
four dollars, *' built the first free church and the 
first free school in America." 

And then there are the Scotch, who distributed 
themselves through all the colonies, bringing the 
simple virtues of their highland homes, preaching 



The Early Colonists. 89 

the strong gospel of old John Knox, putting honor 
upon the proper observance of the holy Sabbath, 
and asserting with dogmatic emphasis the great 
doctrines of civil freedom. To them we are in- 
debted for the Mecklenberg Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, which was the first ringing of x'^-ierica's 
liberty-bell. Into the political and spiritual veins 
of this great nation the rich blood of these and 
other colonial fathers has been freely poured. 

Such men are God's best gift to a nation, and, 
as an American divine has eloquently said, *'in 
their grandeur and goodness are worthy to be 
catalogued with Mount Sinai and with Calvary, 
for they carry in their personalities and in their 
feelings and in their principles and in their char- 
acters all — all that is contained in the law and the 
gospel, and all that Sinai and Calvary stand for." 
By such apostolic and heroic hands our ship of 
state was built. 

" We know what masters laid thy keel, 
What workman wrought thj ribs of steel, 
Who made each mast and sail and rope, 
What anvils rang, what hammers beat 
In what a forge and what a heat 
Were shaped the anchors of thj'^ hope." 



90 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

For their austere morality the fathers have been 
severely censured and caricatured. The penal 
codes of the colonial era are now anathematized 
as cruel even to barbarity, but indiscriminate cen- 
sure betrays ignorance of historic conditions. We 
can not judge men of the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries by nineteenth-century ideals and 
standards. If, however, the colonists, escaped to 
the unrestricted freedom of the Western wilder- 
ness, are compared with their brothers in England 
and all Europe, they stand out as reformers of the 
most advanced and majestic type. Shortly after 
the ** Mayflower '' left England the number of of- 
fenses punishable with death was thirty-one, in- 
creased later to two hundred and twenty-three, of 
which one hundred and seventy-six were without 
benefit of clergy; while in the American colo- 
nies not one recognized more than fifteen capital 
crimes. So the *' dreadful and disgusting inhu- 
manities *' of our colonial fathers, so much de- 
claimed against, appear among the gentlest amen- 
ities, when compared with their kin of the old 
world. 

And there is another view worthy of considera- 



The Early Colonists. 



tion. The rigidly extreme and sometimes im- 
practicable spirit of the colonists was the normal 
expres'sion of the things for which they themselves 
had suffered. That seeming paradox follows an 
invariable law of the human mind — a fact, by the 
way, that ought to soften all severe criticisms of 
the early fathers. Whipple, in his ''Essays and 
Reviews," says: *' If a body of men be deprived 
of their dearest rights for professing conscientious 
opinions, it is natural that they should attach more 
importance to those opinions than if they were 
allowed their free exercise. It not only makes 
them more sturdy champions of their belief, but 
it leads them into intolerance toward others." 

Out of such material the institutions of our 
American commonwealth have been built. And 
these institutions will abide, because founded on 
the truth of God, built by faith in the providence 
of God, and baptized with the blessing of God. 
Macaulay must for the moment have forgotten or 
failed to take account of the spiritual element in our 
political history when he wrote down his gloomy 
prophecy. ''As for America," said he, ''I appeal 
to the twentieth century. Either some Caesar or 



92 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

Napoleon will seize the reins of government with 
a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully 
plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the 
twentieth century as the Roman empire was in the 
fifth century, with this difference: that the Huns 
and Vandals who ravaged Rome came from with- 
out her borders, while your Huns and Vandals 
will be engendered within your own country and 
by your own institutions." In answer to that 
rather doleful prediction I can not forbear the more 
optimistic judgment and generous prophecy of a 
recent and very accomplished historian of England, 
Prof, John Richard Green: ** In the centuries that 
lie before us the primacy of the world will lie 
with the English people. English institutions, 
English speech, English thought, will become the 
main features of the political, the social, and the 
intellectual life of mankind. ... In the days 
that are at hand, the main current of that people's 
history must run along the channel, not of the 
Thames or the Mersey, but of the Hudson and the 
Mississippi." 

On the rocky summit overlooking the bay where 
the *' Mayflower" first anchored, a magnificent men-. 



The Early Colonists. 93 

ument has been erected. That colossal statue is at 
once a miracle, a parable, and a prophecy — a mir- 
acle of artistic genius, a parable of Christian civ- 
ilization, and a prophecy of increasing national 
glory. On the corners of the pedestal are four 
figures in a sitting posture — representing Law, 
Morality, Freedom, and Education. Standing far 
above, on the lofty shaft of granite, is a majestic 
figure symbolizing Faith, holding an open Bible in 
one hand, and, w^ith the other uplifted, pointing far 
away to the throne of God. What a sublime con- 
ception ! How true to the facts of our heroic his- 
tory ! That open Bible is the Magna Charta of 
America, and that uplifted hand, symbolizing trust 
in the God of our fathers, is the condition of our 
national stability and continued prosperity. 



LECTURE III. 



The Christian Institutions and Laws of the 

Colonists. 

(95) 



LECTURE III. 

THE CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS AND LAWS OF 
THE COLONISTS. 

IN the last lecture we studied the Christian 
character of the early colonists, together with 
the motives that impelled their coming to America, 
and the pronounced religious principles that domi- 
nated their first settlements. It was ascertained 
that all the earliest schemes of discovery and colo- 
nization were inspired by a religious impulse and 
controlled by a Christian purpose. "We all," 
says one of the two oldest of American written con- 
stitutions, " came into these parts of America to 
enjoy the liberties of the gospel in purity and 
peace." Fleeing from ecclesiastical persecution 
in the Old World, they sought safety in the New, 
and opportunity to build a nation in which the 
largest civil and religious liberty, consistent with 
the rights of others, should be sacredly guarded 
and guaranteed. To use the words of Canning, 
they " turned to the New World to redress the bal- 
ance of the Old." 

In our analysis of their sturdy characters, we 
7 (97) 



9^ Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

found in them those virile and splendid virtues, 
out of which all good civilizations are constructed, 
and which have been so eminently distinctive of 
the American commonwealth. A noble genera- 
tion they were. Men who had the spirit of proph- 
ecy, the high purpose of an apostolate, and the sub- 
lime courage of martyrdom. "We have learned 
from them," says a distinguished author, "the 
grand possibilities which wait for men of faith who 
are content to bow their heads to the storm and 
commit their way unto the Lord and trust him to 
bring them to the desired haven." 

Our fathers came to these shores as Christians 
— as Protestant Christians — and on the great car- 
dinal principles of that faith began the making of 
this nation. Those doctrines "cradled our free- 
dom." We found occasion, therefore, in the proc- 
ess of our investigation, for special thankfulness 
that this wonderful country was colonized by Prot- 
estant England, rather than by Catholic France and 
Spain. Speaking of the Spaniards, William Cul- 
len Bryant said: " Fortunately for the progress of 
the human race and the future history of North 
America, all their efforts to gain a permanent foot- 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 99 

hold north of the Gulf of Mexico were in the main 
unsuccessful." And the remark applies with equal 
force to the colonization plans of all Roman Cath- 
olic nations, with their doctrines of a fettered con- 
science, a sealed Bible, a feudal state, and a me- 
dieval civilization. The defeat of Montcalm on 
the Heights of Abraham was the pivot on which 
turned the modern history of the world. 

In one of the public squares in Boston there is 
a statue of Gov. John Winthrop, the " Founder of 
Massachusetts," that devout and able pioneer, 
who is worthy to be canonized as a saint and 
chronicled among the statesmen of the world. It 
is an erect and manly figure, with a Bible in one 
hand and the charter of the colony in the other. 
That heroic statue, with the written scroll and the 
open Book of Heaven, may fittingly represent all 
the founders of this great republic. By the legal 
guarantees of the one and the inspired teachings 
of the other they took possession of this goodly 
land, and laid the foundations of a Christian na- 
tion that has become the marvel and model of 
modern empires. 

Bancroft says that *'the colonists from Maine 



loo Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

to Carolina — the adventurous companions of 
Smith, the proscribed Puritans that freighted the 
fleet of Winthrop, the Quaker outlaws that fled 
from jails, with a Newgate prisoner as their sov- 
ereign — all had faith in God and in the soul." 
And by that unfaltering faith, more than all else, 
were they enabled to defy the discouragements 
and endure the distresses and perils of their wil- 
derness life, while building their heroic princi- 
ples into the framework of this republic. What- 
ever is put in a man's religion will express itself 
in his politics. The governmental doctrines of our 
fathers, therefore, were the public and political ex- 
pression of their profound religious convictions. 

In this lecture we will proceed with our studies 
from men to -principles — from the character of the 
colonists to the character of the institutions they 
estahlished. We will advance from an analysis of 
the rare virtues of the fathers to an inquiry into 
the principles embodied in the constitutions they 
adopted, the laws they enacted, and the social life 
they created. Thus we will ascertain how far 
their avowed faiths were crystallized into organic 
laws, and to what extent they were enthroned in 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. loi 

the life of communities. We have a right to ex- 
pect that men so aggressively religious as to en- 
counter persecution, and so rigidly conscientious 
as to become exiles rather than submit to ecclesi- 
astical tyranny, v^ould embody their convictions 
in the government they constructed, and stamp 
their characters upon the legislation they enacted. 
Further investigation, I am sure, will not disap- 
point this well-grounded expectation. 

And not only so, but we will have a heightened 
appreciation for our large and increasing indebt- 
edness to the early colonists. The constitutions 
under which we live, and the improved education- 
al, industrial, and social conditions of our time, 
are but the flowering and fruitage from the seeds 
of their prayerful and patriotic planning. *' We 
are drinking at the fountains which they opened. 
We walk in their light, and we are to pass on the 
torch to other generations." Of those mighty 
champions of liberty, and the idea they developed 
into our American commonwealth, Longfellow 
thus sweetly sings : 

God has sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this plant- 
ing, 
Then had sifted tlie wheat, as the Hving seed of a nation. 



I02 Christianity and the American Commonzvealth. 

Those living seed, watched by a favoring Provi- 
dence, watered by the tears of a sanctified pa- 
triotism, warmed by the genial sun of civic right- 
eousness, and cultivated by the industrious hands 
of a peerless statesmanship, have produced the 
magnificent Americanism of to-day. Despite its 
defects, and notwithstanding the sad chapters of 
its history, our Americanism stands for all that is 
purest and grandest in the world's modern civili- 
zation. Should any one ask what has been the 
contribution of those colonial patriots to civil and 
religious history, I would answer, in the language 
of a distinguished historian, as follows: ** Free 
governments, by the people and for the people; a 
free press; an enlightened public opinion which 
controls princes and cabinets; free public-schools, 
— open to the children of the people; a nobler 
Christian manhood; a fuller comprehension of 
the religion of Christ, which brings help and com- 
fort to the poor, which brings liberty to the slaves as 
those redeemed by the Saviour of the world; the 
separation of Church and State; the equality of 
all branches of the Church before the law; free- 
dom within the Church, whether it be prelatical 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 103 

or presbyterian or congregational; a quiet Sun- 
day, with its opportunities for the culture of the 
spiritual nature ; and a free pulpit, in sympathy 
with all sorts and conditions of men." Though 
not realized at once — and at times all hopeful 
prophecies seemed about to fail — this at last is the 
harvest of that early sowing. 

Motley, the accomplished historian, thus speaks 
of our great republic: **The American democra- 
cy is the result of all that was great in bygone 
times. All led up to it. It embodies all. Mount 
Sinai is in it; Greece is in it; Egypt is in it; 
Rome is in it; England is in it; all the arts are in 
it, and all the reformations and all the discoveries." 
That generous judgment is true; but of all the 
formative forces that have entered into our civic 
composite life, and given it distinction in modern 
civilization, the type of Christianity embraced by 
the fathers was the most potent and permanent. 
There was a good deal of Mount Sinai in their re- 
ligion, and it found stern expression in the rigid 
terms of their early legislation. 

The Christianity of the colonists taught the su- 
premacy of conscience, the sovereignty of the in- 



I04 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

dividual, the inviolability of private rights, the sa- 
credness of human life, and the brotherhood of 
man. Out of these cardinal doctrines came the 
fundamental principles of our republican govern- 
ment: liberty, equality, fraternity, and the protec- 
tion of life and property. Religious liberty cre- 
ated and sustained an inexorable demand for po- 
litical liberty. Freedom of conscience claims the 
right of free speech and personal independence. 
The facts of history abundantly sustain the state- 
ment of Dr. Baird, that "the political institutions 
of the Puritan colonies of New England are to be 
traced to their religion, not their religion to their 
political institutions ; and this remark applies to the 
other colonies also." And the same author states 
another fact which evidences the religious genesis 
and genius of the great principles on which this 
nation is founded. ** Persecution," said he, *' led 
the Puritan colonists to examine the great subject 
of human rights, the nature and just extent of civil 
government, and the boundaries at which obedi-_ 
ence ceases to be a duty." 

The religion that holds the conscience of a na- 
tion will determine its civilization. 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 105 

The development of those feeble, scattered set- 
tlements into solid, self-sustaining colonies, then 
into independent states, and finally into a power- 
ful union, makes a chapter unique in the annals 
of empires. Certainly some forces above human 
control must have been at work. ''The history," 
says Dr. Leonard Woolse}^ Bacon, " reads like the 
fulfilment of the apocalyptic imagery of a rock 
hewn from the mountain without hands, moving 
on to fill the earth." 

But, before entering more in detail upon the 
study of the character and form of the govern- 
ments established by the colonial fathers, I wish 
to make two observations which will be helpful in 
our investigations and serve as a warning against 
harsh and hasty conclusions. The one refers to 
the ecclesiastical and religious intolerance of the 
colonies, and the other to the severe laws enacted 
and their inhumane administration. My purpose 
is not to defend all the acts of the fathers, or ap- 
prove much of their legislation, but to show that 
their great desire and high intention were to es- 
tablish a distinctly Christian commonwealth, in 
which righteousness should perpetually dwell, and 



io6 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

the golden rule of Christ be made the royal law 
of personal and public life. 

I. It is not surprising that the colonists should 
have enacted the most rigorous laws against the 
Roman papacy, and in New England shown the 
strongest hostility toward the English prelacy. Men 
whose fathers had been killed by Catholic fanat- 
icism, and whose mothers and sisters had to fly in 
terror from their homes at night, with scant cloth- 
ing and not a crust of bread, were not apt to be 
tolerant toward those who might attain power and 
repeat such barbarities. John Endicott, cutting 
out the cross of St. George from the flag of his 
country, because the cross was a symbol used by 
the Church of Rome, is not so much a picture of 
Puritan prejudice as of real fear lest the slightest 
toleration should lead to the restoration of a des- 
potism that had brutally spilled the blood of his fa- 
thers. And the Pilgrims who had been driven 
from their native land by the Act of Uniformity 
and the tyranny of the Stuarts would hardly be 
supposed to look with much favor and hospitality 
upon the Church of England. Banished from the 
Old World for not using the Book of Common 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 107 

Prayer in public service, they would not be swift 
to adopt it as their mode of worship in the New. 
It is a fact not to be wondered at, therefore, that 
** for over sixty years after the Pilgrims landed 
there was not a single Episcopal church in New 
England." And as late as 1720, when it was dis- 
covered that certain persons connected with Yale 
College were leaning toward episcopacy, alarm 
was created ''lest the introduction of Episcopal 
worship into the colony should have a tendency to 
gradually undermine the foundations of civil and 
religious liberty." The memories of Archbishop 
Laud and the Court of Sessions, imprisoning and 
banishing their fathers, were too vivid and recent 
for them not to fear a repetition of the same ter- 
rible tyranny. In the twelve years from 1628 to 
1640 four thousand English families — a total of 
twenty -one thousand persons— came to these 
shores "under stress of the tyranny of Charles 
Stuart and the persecution of William Laud." In- 
deed, so direful were the cruelties that drove near- 
ly all our colonial fathers across the seas, that 
Bancroft has said: ''The history of our coloniza- 
tion is the history of the crimes of Europe." 



io8 Christianity and the American Commonzvealth. 

There was another reason why the colonies of 
New York and New England especially should 
have shown intolerance toward the Roman 
Catholics — the incitement by Jesuit missionaries 
of the Indians to repeated bloody massacres. 
Their complicity in those scenes of carnage led 
the New York Assembly in the year 1700 to pass 
*' an act against Jesuits and popish priests,'* which 
recited the facts of their seditious conduct. And 
this necessitated the aggressive action of the gov- 
ernment of Massachusetts against the French Jes- 
uit missionary, Father Sebastien Rale. Some 
papers of his fell into the hands of the government, 
which furnished conclusive evidence of the fact 
that he had led an Indian expedition against the 
English settlers. Such treachery in the name of 
the Church was quite sufficient to occasion the 
most vigorous measures of expatriation and pro- 
tection. 

2. And another fact must be borne in mind as 
we study the seemingly rigid institutions and harsh 
legislation of the colonists: they lived hack in the 
seventeenth century^ and were not exempt from the 
spirit of that age. They are to be compared. 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 109 

therefore, with seventeenth rather than nineteenth 
century standards. Measured by that rule, '* they 
were the progressives of their age, and were the 
most merciful people of that century." Their 
laws were in milder form and the penalties were 
less severe than any known to that period of 
blood and iron. And yet most forbidding pic- 
tures have been drawn of the brave and hardy 
pioneers, as though they were monsters of cruel- 
ty and exceptions in all history for the enormity 
of their inhumanities in the name of religion. 
The story of burning the witches has been re- 
peated with such pious horror, as though that fa- 
naticism never occurred outside the American 
colonies. There was intolerance, civil and eccle- 
siastical, not to be defended, and there were laws 
enacted and regulations adopted that seem to us 
in this day exceedingly ludicrous ; but we must re- 
member that they lived in the seventeenth century, 
and that they were the gentlest and best people of 
their time. 

In this connection I commend the following ju- 
dicious and accurate statement by an accomplished 
historian: *' No intelligent student of their history 



no Christianity and the American Commonzvealth. 

will ignore the fact that the world has made mar- 
velous progress since 1620. The belief in witch- 
craft was, I think, universal in Christendom, in 
that age. The great jurists and philosophers of 
England were confident that there were such 
creatures as witches. Sir Matthew Hale and Sir 
Thomas Browne and Ralph Cudworth and Black- 
stone, and even John Wesley, believed in witch- 
craft." And Dr. Fisher, in his " History of the 
Christian Church" says: '* It is supposed that, 
prior to the witchcraft epidemic in Massachusetts, 
thirty thousand persons had been put to death in 
England on this charge, seventy-five thousand in 
France, and one hundred thousand in Germany." 
It related that those deaths in Germany were 
caused by the bull issued by Pope Innocent the 
Eighth, 

But this outburst of superstition and fright 
against witchcraft only continued for less than two 
years, and was arrested by the aroused moral sen- 
timent of the colonists themselves, without sug- 
gestion or pressure from abroad. In England 
and on the Continent it raged for many years 
thereafter. And it is well also to recall a fact 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists, 1 1 1 

stated in the former lecture, that in not one of the 
colonies were there more than fifteen crimes pun- 
ishable with death, while in England the number 
was thirty-one. 

It may be well also, while considering these ex- 
aggerations that have so grossly misrepresented the 
colonists, to refer to the case of Roger Williams. 
While detracting nothing from his fearless cour- 
age, perfect sincerity, and great conscientious- 
ness, and reiterating the highest appreciation of 
his valuable contributions to the cause of civil and 
religious liberty, I must believe that his banish^ 
ment was more attributable to his obstinancy and 
contentiousness than to the intolerance and inhu- 
manity of his fellow colonists. He declaimed 
against the charter of the colony as without au- 
thority; declared that the people had no title to 
their lands; taught that it was unlawful to even 
worship with the unregenerate, though members 
of one's own family, and that it was unlawful to 
administer an oath to a citizen who was not a 
Christian. He was a constitutional separatist. A 
minister of the Church of England, he left that 
body to become an Independent, then he became 



112 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

a Baptist by self-appointment in a church of his 
own organizing, and afterward left that, to die 
outside the communion of any Christian Church. 
One historian speaks of Roger Williams as " sep- 
arating himself not only from the English Church, 
but from all who would not separate from it, and 
from all who would not separate from these, until 
he could no longer, for conscience' sake, hold 
fellowship with his wife in family prayers." It is 
a pleasure, however, to know that his sentence of 
banishment was revoked some years thereafter, 
when troubles came upon him, and an order 
was entered that Mr. Williams "■ shall have liberty 
to repair into any of our towns for his security and 
comfortable abode during these public troubles." 
Probably the jirst distinctive act toward repre- 
sentative government in America was that of the 
Virginia colony in 1619, a year before the Pil- 
grims landed at Plymouth Rock. The burgesses 
assembled in Jamestown, July 30, 1619, and the 
historic meeting of the little legislature was held 
in the church. From the contemporaneous ac- 
count sent to England by the Speaker, I quote as 
follows : 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 113 

*'The most convenient place we could finde to 
sitt in was the Quire of the Church, when Sir 
George Yardley, the Governor, being sett down in 
his accustomed place, those of the Counsel of Es- 
tate sate nexte him on both handes, except only 
the Secretary, then appointed Speaker, who sate 
right before him. John Twine, Gierke of the 
General Assembty, being placed nexte to the 
Speaker, and Thomas Peirse, the Sergeant, stand- 
ing at the barre, to be ready for any service the 
Assembly should command him. But forasmuche 
as men's affairs doe little prosper where God's 
service is neglected, all the burgesses took their 
places in the Quire till a prayer was said by Mr. 
Bucke, the minister, that it would please God to 
guide and sanctifie all our proceedings to his owne 
glory, and the good of this plantation. Prayer 
being ended, to the intente that as we had begun 
at God Almighty, so we might proceed with awful 
and due respecte towards the Leiutenant, our 
most gratious and dread soveraigne, all the Bur- 
gesses were intreated to retyre themselves into the 
body of the Churche, which being done, before 

they were freely admitted, they were called to order 
8 



114 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

and by name, and so every man (none staggeringe 
at it) tooke the oath of Supremacy, and then en- 
tered the Assembly." 

Thus it will be seen that the first movement to- 
ward democracy in America was inaugurated in 
the house of God and with the blessing of the 
minister of God. And this interesting incident 
leads to the statement of a momentous fact: that 
z'n America, the state was the outgrowth of the 
Church, The sanctuary built the nation. ** In 
all affairs," says Dr. Dorchester, ** civil and ec- 
clesiastical, the Church took the precedence, and 
gave character to the civil administration; the 
State was only the Church acting in secular and 
civil affairs." The ballot was restricted to mem- 
bers of the Church. This suffrage law was 
adopted in 1631, and, however unwise such action 
may now be considered, we can not but honor the 
patriotic and religious purpose that inspired it. 
They desired to lodge political power only in the 
hands of good men. It was not an ecclesiastical 
ambition to subordinate State to Church, but a 
misguided effort, it maybe, to save the State from 
a corrupt and dangerous citizenship. That fran- 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 115 

chise clause, adopted by the Massachusetts Bay 
colony, reads as follows: '* To the end that the 
body of the Commons may be preserved of honest 
and good men, no man shall be admitted to the 
freedom of this body politic but such as are mem- 
bers of some of the Churches within the limits of 
the same." This, or a similar statute, was adopted 
by the colonial government of Maine, Massachu- 
setts, and Connecticut. In Connecticut the law 
was more liberal: residents of accepted character 
might be admitted as freeman, but the Governor 
must be a member of the Church. The New 
Haven colony restricted the suffrage to Church- 
members, and adopted the Scriptures as the law 
of the land. And in all the colonies, except 
Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, ministers of the 
gospel were supported by public taxation. But 
in extenuation of such legislation it must be re- 
membered that throughout Christendom at that 
time it was '' the universal prerogative of the 
Church to confer the civil franchise," and it w^as 
the admitted duty of all citizens to support the 
Church. The whole argument of those devout 
and heroic colonists has been stated by Dr. Dor- 



1 1 6 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

Chester in a single sentence: " The key principle 
was that government, civil and ecclesiastical, is 
constituted and administered upon the Bible as the 
source of knowledge and authority." 

And this principle controlled in all the laws 
framed for the government of the colonies. The 
first general court of the Connecticut colony 
adopted a set of laws, and prescribed that all de- 
ficiencies in the same were to be supplied by the 
Word of God. Basing their ideas of government 
upon the ancient Hebrew theocracy, the Massa- 
chusetts colony passed this act: '*No custom nor 
prescription shall ever prevail amongst us . . . 
that can be proved to be morally sinful by the 
Word of God." The governor of the colony 
of New York was charged to '' take special care 
that God Almighty be devoutly served through- 
out the government." In Virginia stringent stat- 
utes were enacted for the punishment of blas- 
phemy, to compel observance of the Lord's day, 
attendance upon public worship, etc. ; and one 
provided that a person denying the existence 
of God, or the Trinity, or the authority of the 
Scriptures, should forfeit all official positions with- 
in the province. 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 117 

The chapter of laws adopted by the Quaker 
colony of Pennsylvania is so curious in phrase and 
spirit, that I can not refrain from giving a liberal 
extract : " Whereas ye glory of Almighty God, and 
ye good of mankind, is ye reason and end of gov- 
ernment, and therefore government in itself is a 
venerable ordinance of God ; and forasmuch as it is 
principally desired and intended by ye proprietary 
and governor, and ye freedom of ye province of 
Pennsylvania, and territories thereunto belonging, 
to make and establish such laws as shall best pre- 
serve true Christians and civil liberty, in opposi- 
tion to all unchristian, licentious, and unjust prac- 
tises, whereby God may have his due, C^sar his 
due, and ye people their due, from tyranny and 
oppression on ye one side, and insolency and li- 
centiousness on ye other, so that ye best and 
firmest foundation may be laid for ye present and 
future happiness both of ye governor and people 
of this province and territorys aforesaid and their 
posterity: Be it therefore enacted by William 
Penn, proprietary and governor, by and with ye 
advice and consent of ye deputys of ye free- 
men of this province and counties aforesaid in 



1 1 8 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

assembly mett, and by ye authority of ye same, 
that these following chapters and paragraphs 
shall be the laws of Pennsylvania and the ter- 
ritorys thereof." Then, after granting the most 
liberty of conscience and worship, in order 
that looseness, irreligion, and atheism might not 
creep into the body bolitic, the law provides for 
the observance of the Sabbath, punishes profane 
swearing and cursing, and further enacts, that 
'* whoever shall speak loosely and profanely of 
Almighty God, Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or 
Scriptures of truth, and is thereof legally convict- 
ed, shall forfeit and pay five pounds, and be im- 
prisoned for five days in the house of correction. '* 

Most remarkable indeed were these efforts of 
the fathers to establish a pure Christian com- 
monwealth. And in many respects they were far 
in advance of their age. As nation-builders they 
were republican pioneers. 

Dr. Leonard Bacon says: *' The greatest and 
boldest improvement which has been made in 
criminal jurisprudence by any one act since the 
dark ages was that which was make by our fa- 
thers when they determined that **the judicial 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 119 

laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses, 
and as they are a fence to the moral law, being 
neither typical nor ceremonial nor having any ref- 
ence to Canaan, shall be accounted of moral 
equity, and generally bind all offenders and be a 
rule to all the courts." 

The pious sturdy colonists brought with them 
also a sacred regard for the holy Sabbath, and 
they enacted laws for its rigid observance. Some 
of these seem rather ludicrous and extreme, but 
evidence the straightforwardness and sincerity of 
those heroic men, out of whose sublime virtues 
this nation has been evolved. Little labor was 
performed, and scant food was prepared on that 
solemn day. All the recreation deemed neces- 
sary were two long walks, deliberate, silent, and 
solemn, to and from the house of worship. But 
that gruesome Sabbath, so much declaimed against, 
has done much to make glorious the civilization 
and history of this great republic. 

Of the so-called ** Connecticut Blue Laws" I 
need not speak to this audience, for all well-in- 
formed persons know that they never existed in 
fact, but were the malicious fabrication of one 



1 20 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

Samuel Peters, a Tory and an English clergyman 
who had been driven from the country on account 
of his disloyalty during the war of the Revolution. 

Some things in their manner of thought and 
life are certainly very curious, if not ludicrous. 

Dr. Dorchester, in his admirable *' History of 
Christianity in the United States," reproduces an 
ancient document written in Danvers, Mass., in 
1713, which shows the grotesque Sabbath scruples 
that obtained in that day: *'When ye services 
at ye house were ended, ye council and other dig- 
nitaries were entertained at ye house of Mr. Epes, 
on the hill near by, and we had a bountiful table, 
with Bear's meat and venison, the last of which 
was from a fine Buck shot in the woods near by. 
Ye bear was killed in Lynn Woods near Reading. 
After ye blessing was craved by Mr. Garrish, of 
Wenthom, word came that ye buck was shot on 
ye Lord's day by Pequot, an Indian. Like Ana- 
nia of old, ye council, therefore, refused to eat of 
ye venison, but it was agreed that Pequot should 
receive forty stripes save one for lying and pro- 
faning the Lord's day, restore Mr. Epes the cost 
of ye deer; and considering this a just and 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 121 

righteous sentence on ye sinful heathen, and that 
a blessing had been craved on ye meat, ye coun- 
cil all partook of it but Mr. Shepard, whose con- 
science was tender on ye point of venison." 

I invite you next to consider t/ie injiuence of the 
ministry and the '^ meeting-house^^ ufo:i colonial 
institutions, 

*' According to the system established in Massa- 
chusetts," says Hildreth in his *' History of the 
United States," the Church and State were most 
intimately blended. The magistrates and gen- 
eral court, aided by the advice of the elders, 
claimed and exercised a supreme control in spir- 
itual as well as temporal matters; while even in 
matters purely temporal the elders were consulted 
on all important questions." The central build- 
ing and ruling influence through all the colonial 
period was the meeting-house. **The village 
grew up around it, and the country roads were 
laid out with reference to it." And so permanent 
and potential has been that influence that James 
Russell Lowell said: *'New England was all 
meeting-house when I was growing up." It was 
a sanctuary of worship on the Sabbath, and a hall 



123 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

of legislation and administration during the week. 
There was held the town meeting, "that little 
congress of the local democracy which was the 
germ of the republic," and all its deliberations 
were opened with an earnest invocation and closed 
with the apostolic benediction. 

The most influential and honored person in 
every parish was the colonial clergyman. The 
parson was what his name implied, the chief per- 
son in every community. He was consulted not 
only about questions in morals and theology, but 
about matters of legislation and civil administra- 
tion. In some instances he was called upon to 
prepare important state papers, and to go on deli- 
cate and dangerous missions and embassies. Dr. 
Increase Mather was entrusted with a mission that 
demanded the most skilful diplomacy, and achieved 
such success as called forth the highest expressions 
of praise and gratitude. The Levitical priesthood, 
in Jewish history, *' constituted," says John Stu- 
art Mill, *'the firm vertebral column which se- 
cured the historic unity of the nation throughout 
the changing generations." And another author 
thus refers to the same suggestive fact: "A bond 



Institutions and Lazvs of the Early Colonists. 123 

of union running through the tribes was the tribe 
of Levi, which were given cities within the terri- 
tories of other tribes, instead of a territory of 
their own, so that they might reside in every part 
of the country, and keep the people in mind of 
the national covenant which made them one peo- 
ple." This means of spiritual instruction and 
propagandism was incorporated into the political 
life and found striking illustration of the American 
colonies, and was probably the most efficient agen- 
cy in producing and strengthening the national 
spirit that ultimately found expression in the ma- 
jestic union of sovereign states. Some years ago, 
in one of his Boston Monday lectures, Joseph 
Cook gave utterance to a similar opinion, but his 
statement as to Mr. Wesley was inaccurate: *'It 
is sometimes said that Wesley and Whitefield, 
moving up and down the Atlantic coast as shut- 
tles, wove together the sentiments of the thirteen 
colonies, and made union possible by creating a 
national spirit." 

Ministers of the colonial period, whether church- 
men or dissenters, were men in authority. Their 
influence was unbounded, determining, as they did, 



1 24 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

all questions in the colony, *' from the choice of a 
governor to that of the village school teacher." 
They belonged to an order of democratic nobility. 
They commanded the profoundest respect of the 
older, and to the children they were the " most 
vivid image of respectability and majesty." The 
minister's '* calmly awful" appearance, and his 
quaint dress and three-cornered hat, form a dis- 
tinct picture of social life in the second generation 
of the colonial times. Mrs. Stowe's description of 
Dr. Samuel Hopkins may serve as a portrait of the 
ministers of that day, whether churchman in Vir- 
ginia or Puritan in New England. *'He entered 
the dining-room with all the dignity of a full-bot- 
tomed, powdered wig, full flowing coat with ample 
cuffs, silver knee and shoe buckles, as became the 
majesty of a minister of those days. The com- 
pany rose at his entrance. The men bowed, and 
the women courtesied ; and all remained standing 
while he addressed to each, with punctilious de- 
corum, those inquiries in regard to health and 
welfare which preface a social interview." 

In Massachusetts the magistrates and general 
court exercised no important function and adopted 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 125 

no unusual measures without **the advice of the 
elders." And when, in 1649, the first codification 
of the laws of that colony was made, the commission 
appointed for the purpose consisted of '*two mag- 
istrates, two ministers, and two able persons from 
among the people of each county." Into that code 
some ancient laws of the Hebrews were literally 
transferred. The * ' Body of Liberties ' ' adopted by 
the colony a few years before was prepared by Rev. 
Nathaniel Ward, of Ipswich, a man learned in law 
and divinity. ''This code," says Bancroft, ''for 
liberality and comprehensiveness, may vie with any 
similar record from the days of Magna Charta." 
At the first session of the general court of the 
colony of Connecticut, which he had founded, 
Thomas Hooker preached a sermon in which he 
said : ' ' The foundation of authority is laid in the 
free consent of the people; the choice of public 
magistrates belongs unto the people, by God's 
own ordinance; . . . they who have power 
to appoint ofRcers and magistrates have the right 
to set the bounds and limitations of the power and 
place of those who are called." 

A striking evidence of the potential influence 



1 26 Christianity and the American Commonzvcalth. 

exercised by the colonial clergy in the administra- 
tion of civil affairs and their valued contributions 
to the foundations of our republican government is 
found in Bancroft's elaborate account of a certain 
political crisis. It was in 1676, when a serious 
breach had occurred growing out of the enforce- 
ment of the acts of navigation. The colonists 
made firm resistance, and determined to fall, if 
fall they must, with dignity and unstained integrity. 
And, as was their pious custom, they went to the 
house of prayer to find grace and wisdom for their 
political trials. The great historian says: "Re- 
ligion had been the motive of the settlement; re- 
ligion was now its counselor. The fervors of the 
most ardent were kindled; a more than usually 
solemn form of religious observance was adopted ; 
a synod of all the churches in Massachusetts was 
convened to inquire into the causes of the dangers 
to New England liberty and the mode of removing 
the evils." And thus the early patriots sought 
counsel from the Most High in determining what 
was duty in a national crisis. 

Among the greatest of colonial patriots was the 
Rev. Jonathan Mahew, and out of his religious 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 127 

convictions was born his sublime devotion to the 
cause of civil freedom and independence. *' In- 
structed in youth," as he said of himself, " in the 
doctrines of civil liberty, as they v^ere taught by 
such men as Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero, and 
others among the ancients; and such as Sidney 
and Milton, Locke and Hoodly, among the mod- 
erns, I liked them ; and having learned from the 
Holy Scriptures that wise, brave, and virtuous 
men were always friends to liberty, that God gave 
the Israelites a king in his anger, because they 
had not sense and virtue enough to like a free 
commonwealth, and that where the spirit of the 
Lord is there is liberty, this made me conclude that 
freedom is a great blessing." And to this man, 
whose voice was potential in all the stormy and try- 
ing scenes of that early time, some historians give 
the high honor of making the first formal sugges- 
tion of a federal union. It is said that he planted 
the seed-thought in the mind of Samuel Adams, 
who became its first great champion. The next 
day, after holding an interdenominational com- 
munion service in his church, he met Samuel 
Adams, and said to him, with the enthusiasm of a 



128 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

new inspiration : " We have just had a communion 
of the churches, now let us have a union of 
states." That is claimed to be the genesis, first 
of colonial, and afterward of the federal union. 

And it is a fact of history that though the genius 
of a great statesman penned the Declaration of 
Independence, it was the convincing eloquence of 
a minister of the gospel that compelled the mem- 
bers of the Continental Congress to affix to it 
their signature. That minister, a member of the 
Congress, was the Rev. Dr. Witherspoon, Presi- 
dent of Princeton College. The Congress hesi- 
tated. The destiny of a nation was suspended 
upon one hour of agonizing suspense. The his- 
toric document lay unrolled upon the table. At 
that critical moment the venerable President of 
Princeton arose, and with great emotion uttered 
these words : " To hesitate at this moment is to con- 
sent to our own slavery. That notable instrument 
upon your table, which insures immortality to its 
author, should be subscribed this very morning by 
every pen in this house. He that will not respond 
to its accent and strain every nerve to carry into 
effect its provisions is unworthy the name of free- 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 129 

man. Whatever I have of property, of reputation, 
is staked on the issue of this contest; and although 
these gray hairs must soon descend into the sep- 
ulcher, I would infinitely rather that they descend 
hither by the hand of an executioner than desert 
at this crisis the sacred cause of my country." 

Among the most influential of those early pas- 
tors and teachers was the Rev. Alexander Whita- 
ker, who was honored with the title of '*the 
apostle of Virginia." He gave Christian baptism 
to the Indian princess, Pocahontas, and officiated 
on the occasion of her marriage. And another 
distinguished minister in Virginia was a native of 
Scotland, a man of letters, and one eminently 
gifted with the leadership, the Rev. James Blair. 
By his indefatigable labors the college of William 
and Mary was established, and for forty-nine 
years he was its able President. 

In New England was Thomas Hooker, whom 
Cotton Mather called **the incomparable Hook- 
er" — a scholarly graduate of Cambridge and hon- 
ored with an invitation to sit m the Westminster 
Assembly, whose ability as a statesman was only 
equaled by his eloquence as a preacher, his learn- 



130 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

ing as a theologian, and his self-denying toils for 
his poor sheep in the wilderness. So great was 
his power that it is said ''miracles were attributed 
to him by his wondering parishioners." But the 
greatest leader of that early day, a Cambridge 
scholar and fellow of Emanuel College, was the 
Rev. John Cotton. Driven from his parish church, 
St. Botolph's in Lincolnshire, he fled the country, 
and, "after many narrow escapes," reached Bos- 
ton in 1633. He soon rose to unrivaled influence, 
and was called "the Pope of New England." 
One historian of that time said that whatever John 
Cotton " delivered in the pulpit was soon put into 
an order of the court ... or set up as a practise 
in the Church." Roger Williams reported the 
people of New England as saying that " they could 
hardly believe that God would suffer Mr. Cotton 
to err." So vast and abiding was his influence as 
to call forth from Thomas Carlyle this quaint re- 
mark: "John Cotton, his mark, very curiously 
stamped on the face of this planet, likely to con- 
tinue for some time." To his genius and abiding 
influence Longfellow paid this appreciative trib- 
ute: 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 131 

The lantern of St. Botolph's ceased to burn 
When from the portals of that church he came, 
To be a burning and a shining light, 
Here in the wilderness. 

What was said of Oliver Cromwell might have 
been applied just as truly to John Cotton: that 
*' he was a strong man; in the dark perils of war, 
in the high places of the field, hope shone in him 
like a pillar of fire when it had gone out in all 
others." 

But of Thomas Bray, in Maryland, and Jona- 
than Dickinson, in New Jersey, of whom Erskine 
said "the British Isles had produced no such 
writer on divinity in the eighteenth century," and 
John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, and the two 
remarkable but quaint brothers. Increase and Cot- 
ton Mather, and others who wrought their noble 
characters into the Christian civilization of that 
early period, I can not speak at length. A grate- 
ful word must be spoken of Jonathan Edwards, 
the grandest figure in the colonial pulpit. Among 
the mighty men of the centuries his name will ever 
have conspicuous mention. As theologian, au- 
thor, educator, preacher, he impressed this nation 



132 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

and all its generations. " I consider Jonathan 
Edwards," says Robert Hall, ** the greatest of the 
sons of men. He ranks with the brightest lumi- 
naries of the Christian Church, not excluding any 
country or any age since the apostolic." This 
marvelous man, who was "a Thomas a Kempis, a 
Calvin, a Jeremy Taylor in one," has enriched 
the spiritual and political heritage of the American 
commonwealth, and " his name invests the middle 
colonial period with a halo of glory and renown." 
I come now to consider the organic laws adopt- 
ed by the young states soon to form a more per- 
fect union — "an indissoluble union of indestruc- 
tible states." The constitution of New Jersey, 
framed in 1776, guaranteed to every one the *' in- 
estimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God 
in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his con- 
science,'" and then declared that "all persons 
professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant 
sect, and who shall demean themselves peaceably 
under the government, should be capable of being 
members of either branch of the Legislature, and 
should fully and freely enjoy every privilege and 
immunity enjoyed by others, their fellow citizens." 



liislJutions and Lazvs of the Early Colonists. 133 

The constitution of New Hampshire affirmed 
*' that morality and piety, rightly grounded on 
evangelical principles, would give the best and 
greatest security to government," and ''that the 
knowledge of these was most likely to be propa- 
gated by the institution of the public worship of 
the Deity, and public instruction in morality and 
religion." *' The towns," therefore, were au- 
thorized and empowered to make proper and ade- 
quate provision for the maintenance of '' public 
Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and mo- 
rality." 

The constitution of Delaware declared that *'all 
persons professing the Christian religion ought 
forever to enjoy equal rights and privileges," and 
provided that all persons elected to the Legislature 
or appointed to any other public office should 
make the following declaration: "I do profess 
faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ his 
Son, and the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for- 
evermore; and I do acknowledge the Holy Scrip- 
tures of the Old and New Testaments to be given 
by divine inspiration." 

In the organic law of North Carolina, adopted 



1 34 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

about the same time, there was a provision de- 
claring that *' no person who should deny the be- 
ing of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion, 
or the divine authority of either the Old or New 
Testament, or who should hold religious princi- 
ples incompatible with the freedom and safety of 
the state, should be capable of holding any office 
or place of trust in the civil government of the 

state." 

The constitution of Georgia, adopted in 1777, 

says, ** Every officer of the state shall be liable to 
be called to account by the House of Assembly," 
and that every member of that House ** shall be of 
the Protestant religion." 

South Carolina, in 1778, framed a constitution, 
which directed the Legislature, at its regular meet- 
ing, to ** choose by ballot from among themselves, 
or from the people at large, a governor and com- 
mander-in-chief, a lieutenant-governor, and privy 
council, all of the Protestant religion." It further 
provide that no man should be eligible to a seat 
in either branch of the Legislature, '* unless he be 
of the Protestant religion," and positively or- 
dained '*that the Christian religion be deemed, 



Institutions and Laws of the Early Colonists. 135 

and is hereby constituted and declared to be, the 
established religion of this land." 

In 1780 Massachusetts adopted a constitution, in 
which was the f ollov/ing language : ' ' That as the 
happiness of a people, and the good order and pres- 
ervation of civil government, essentially depend 
upon piety, religion, and morality; and as these 
can not be generally diffused through a communi- 
ty but by the institution of the public worship of 
God and of public instruction in piety, religion, 
and morality: therefore, to promote their happi- 
ness, and to secure the good order and preser- 
vation of their government, the people of this 
commonwealth have a right to invest their Legis- 
lature with power to authorize and require, and the 
Legislature shall from time to time authorize and 
require the several towns, parishes, precincts, and 
other bodies politic, or religious societies, to make 
suitable provision, at their own expense, for the 
institution of the public worship of God, and for 
the support and maintenance of public Protestant 
teachers of piety, religion, and morality, in all cases 
where such provision shall not be made voluntari- 
ly: and the people of this commonwealth have 



1^6 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

also a right to, and do, invest their Legislature with 
authority to enjoin upon all the subjects an attend- 
ance upon the instructions of the public teachers 
aforesaid, at stated times and seasons, if there be 
any one whose instructions they can conscien- 
tiously attend;" and it was also provided that 
every person ** chosen governor, lieutenant-gov- 
ernor, senator, or representative, and accepting 
the trust," shall solemnly affirm that he ** believes 
the Christian religion, and has a firm persuasion 
of its truth." 

But further investigation is unnecessary to es- 
tablish the truth of my contention. Such was the 
structure and dominant spirit of the early colonial 
institutions. Although reaction soon set in, and 
many modifications were adopted from time to 
time to meet the demands of a liberalizing public 
opinion, those governments '* lasted long enough 
to be the mold in which the civilization of the 
young states should set and harden." 



LECTURE IV. 

Christianity and the Nation. 

(137) 



LECTURE IV. 

CHRISTIANITT AND THE NATION. 

IN the last lecture we studied the principles em- 
bodied by the colonists in the institutions they 
established. Attention was directed to the com- 
pacts and constitutions they adopted, the laws 
they enacted, and the social life they created. 
Having previously analyzed the character of the 
early settlers of America, and noted the high 
Christian motive that impelled their coming to 
these shores, and the divine purpose that domi- 
nated their efforts to build here a nation in which 
they could worship God unmolested, we expected 
to find their vigorous and aggressive religious 
principles preeminent in the social and govern- 
mental conditions they established. And that ex- 
pectation was abundantly realized. We discov- 
ered that religion chiefly inspired the colonization 
of this great country, and religion determined the 
character of government under which those 
Christian exiles proposed to live. Some of the 

laws enacted were but transcripts of the divine 

(139) 



140 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

law, and nothing was allowable that was not sus- 
tained by the letter or spirit of the Holy Scrip- 
tures. In more than one colony the oath of a 
public officer was scarcely less than a formal con- 
fession of faith. In all except two colonies — 
Rhode Island and Pennsylvania — the Church was 
established by law, and ministers were supported 
by public taxation. In several colonies there was 
a spiritual qualification on the suffrage — only those 
allowed to vote who were members of the Church. 
By thus guarding the franchise effort was made to 
lodge political power only in the hands of good 
men, and to preserve the government pure from 
immorality and irreligion. However unwise the 
measures adopted, we can not but applaud the 
high purpose of such legislation. They thought 
it better that the state should be molded by the 
Church than for the Church to be molded after 
the state. 

Iri tracing the evolution of those scattered set- 
tlements into organized colonies, and then into 
the dignity and independence of statehood, we 
noted the informing and guiding influence still ex- 
ercised by the Christian religion. Though the 



Christianity and the Nation. 



I4.I 



relaxation of certain regulations was made nec- 
essary by the rapid increase of population, and 
other laws had to be repealed or greatly modified, 
the distinct Christian and Protestant character of 
their institutions was carefully preserved. The 
constitutions of the young states sought to sacred- 
ly guard the priceless heritage of the fathers, and 
some of them reenthroned with emphasis the doc- 
trines of civil and religious liberty that had made 
the country grow so great and with such majestic 
speed. 

We will now advance from the colonial to the 
national period of our country's history, and in 
this lecture study Christianity and the Nation. 
We will ascertain, if possible, how far those gran- 
ite Christian principles and sturdy faiths of the 
colonies we have been so eagerly investigating 
were retained and employed in the nation that 
was builded. It has been positively affirmed, and 
by one somewhat eminent in literature, that ** the 
government of the United States is not in any 
sense founded upon the Christian religion." Is 
there any historic foundation for that contention, 
or did the author take counsel of personal de- 



142 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

sire rather than accepted and authoritative fact? 
That the latter is true will be triumphantly sus- 
tained by the results of a little candid investiga- 
tion. Did the colonies lose their distinctive relig- 
ious character when they developed into nation- 
hood? Was there anything in the evolutionary 
process to strip them of their Christian principles 
and demand that they be clothed upon with new 
faiths, or no faith? Was the nation built of new 
materials, or did the framers of our federal gov- 
ernment use the principles and forces already at 
hand? These and similar inquiries must now be 
impartially considered and candidly answered. 

That certain adverse influences, notably French 
infidelity, imported during the war of the Revolu- 
tion, had a temporary yet strong effect upon our 
national life must be admitted. To that darkest 
period of our nation's annals attention will be 
given. But that those destructive influences were 
sufficiently potent to change the character of our 
social life and the type of our governmental insti- 
tutions, I apprehend, will not be sustained by the 
facts of history. 

Before the national constitution was framed 



Christianity and the Nation. 143 

there was a severing of the politico-ecclesiastical 
ties that had long existed in most of the colonies. 
But the separation of the Church from the State 
did not mean the severance of the State from God, 
or of the nation from Christianity. Some of the 
colonial states disestablished the Church and passed 
laws guaranteeing unrestricted freedom of wor- 
ship before the plan of a constitutional convention 
had ever taken shape in the mind of any patriot- 
statesman. Virginia did so two years before the 
convention met, and fully ten years before all 
repressive acts against dissenters had been swept 
from the statute-books. And other colonies took 
similar action. Those changes came by the logic 
of events. They were demanded, expected, and 
could not be resisted. 

From such an unauthorized and unscriptural 
union of Church and State of course evil came. 
Bancroft states the case clearly in a few well 
worded sentences: ''Since a particular form of 
worship had become a part of the civil establish- 
ment, irreligion was now to be punished as a civil 
offense. The state was a model of Christ's king- 
dom on earth; treason against the civil govern- 



144 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

ment was treason against Christy and, reciprocal- 
ly, as the gospel had the right paramount, blas- 
phemy, or whatever a jury might call blasphemy, 
was the highest offense in the catalogue of crimes. 
To deny any book of the Old or New Testament 
to be the written and infallible word of God was 
punished by fine or by stripes, and, in case of 
obstinacy, by exile or death. Absence from the 
ministry of the word was punished by fine." 

The too close union of Church and State, as 
population grew and immigration increased, be 
came a source of increasing irritation. It was an 
unnatural alliance, and has ever been an occasion 
of injury — injury to the Church and peril to the 
State. Christ and Caesar are at peace, but their 
kingdoms are independent. They cooperate, but 
should never unite. The miter and the crown 
should never encircle the same brow. The cro- 
zier and the scepter should never be wielded by 
the same hand. And whenever the functions of 
the State have been usurped by the Church, or the 
offices of the State have been seized and exercised by 
the Church, Christ and Caesar have alike suffered 
at the hands of professed but misguided friends. 



Christianity and the Nation. 145 

But the sundering of the ties that bound Church 
and State too closely together did not drive the 
nation from Christianity. No such purpose was 
contemplated and no such action was taken. 
Their high ambidon was not to construct a new 
nation out of new materials, but to make strong 
and more enduring the one founded on the faith 
of their fathers. 

"A pure republic, where, beneath the sway 
Of mild and equal laws, framed by themselves, 
One people dwell and own no lord save God." 

The scenes connected with the overthrow of 

British power and the firm establishment of an 

independent nationhood form some of the most 

thrilling and brilliant chapters in the annals of 

America, if not in the world. But not all the 

heroism was on the high places of the field; and 

not all the victories were won in the wild shock of 

battle. There was a heroism of pure faith as well 

as of high courage. And the one was not less 

potential than the other. The patriarch kneeling 

at his family altar, the minister in his pulpit, the 

devout mother in Israel hiding all these wondrous 

things of God in her heart, and the words of cheer 
10 



146 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

sent to the front, were not unimportant factors in 
the final triumph of the colonial arms. Along 
with the military chieftain's words of command 
went the ringing appeals and fervent prayers of 
the ministers of religion. The man of God sat on 
the mountain-side with hands uplifted in piteous 
prayer to Heaven, while brave battalions charged 
with intrepid courage upon their enemies on the 
plains below. And but for that mountain of 
prayer there would not have been the glorious 
victory of the plain. 

** The pulpit of the Revolution," a distinguished 
author says, *' was the secret of that moral energy 
which sustained the republic in its material weak- 
ness against superior numbers and discipline and 
all the powers of England." The intrepid faith 
of the ministry was as inspiring as the drum-beat 
of heroic legions led by some gallant commander 
flushed with the honors of great victory. And 
all through the history of the American common- 
wealth the holy men who have ministered at her 
altars of religion by their exposition and enforce- 
ment of the ethics of the Man of Galilee have 
** connected," says John Quincy Adams, *' with 



Christianity and the Nation. 147 

one indissoluble bond the principles of civil gov- 
ernment with the principles of Christianity." 

And all during that memorable struggle of eight 
eventful years the Continental Congress, voicing 
the national faith, often appointed days of fasting 
and prayer, and repeatedly invited the people to 
repentance, reformation, and the renewal of their 
Christian vows. Strange indeed were the passage 
of such solemn resolutions if they were not an ex- 
pression of the spiritual hope and faith of the na- 
tion. At the very beginning of that long war 
Congress formally expressed its desire to " have the 
people of all ranks and degrees duly impressed 
with a solemn sense of God's superintending prov- 
idence, and of their duty to rely in all their lawful 
enterprises in his aid and direction.*' In the proc • 
lamation of a general fast these words occur: 
**That they may with united hearts confess and 
bewail their manifold sins and transgressions, and 
by a sincere repentance and amendment of life 
appease His righteous displeasure, and through the 
merits and mediation of Jesus Christ obtain his 
pardon and forgiveness." This language reads 
very much like a pastoral letter issued by some 



148 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

great ecclesiastical synod, conference, or council. 
Here is a clear, distinct confession of faith in *'the 
merits and mediation of Jesus Christ" by the 
Congress of the nation, which was the authorita- 
tve voice and conscience of the people. 

And a few months later another proclamation 
was issued, which contained this language: "The 
Congress do also, in the most earnest manner, 
recommend to all the members of the United 
States, and particularly the officers, civil and mili- 
tary, under them, the exercise of repentance and 
reformation ; and further require of them the strict 
observance of the articles which forbid profane 
swearing and all immoralities." Thus with the 
fervor of apostles did those revolutionary states- 
men plead for holiness of conduct, that the nation 
might be assured of the favor of heaven. They 
had not read the history of Israel in vain, and 
knew that it is righteousness that exalteth a nation. 

In 1777 Congress called the colonies to earnest 
prayer, and begged '* that with one heart and voice 
the good people may express the grateful feelings 
of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the 
service of their Divine Benefactor; and that, to- 



Christianity and the Nation. 149 

gether with their sincere acknowledgments and 
offerings, they may join the penitent confession 
of their manifold sins, whereby they have forfeit- 
ed every favor, and their earnest supplication that 
it may please God, through the merits of Jesus 
Christ, inercifully to forgive and blot them out of 
remembrance; that it may please him graciously 
to afford his blessings on the governments of these 
states respectively, and prosper the public council 
of the whole; to inspire our commanders, both by 
land and sea, and all under them, with that wisdom 
and fortitude which may render them fit instru- 
ments, under the government of Almighty God, to 
secure to these United States the greatest of all 
blessings — independence and peace ... to take 
schools and seminaries for education, so necessary 
for cultivating the principles of true liberty, virtue, 
and piety, under his nurturing hand, and to pros- 
per the means of religion for the promotion and 
enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth in 
righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." 
jf^[ In 1799, ^^y rtisolution of Congress, the people 
are called upon to pray: '* That God would grant 
to his Church the plentiful effusions of divine 



1 50 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

grace, and pour out his Holy Spirit on all min- 
isters of the gospel; that he would bless and pros- 
per the means of education and spread the light of 
Christian knowledge throughout the remotest cor- 
ners of the earth." And similar appeals were 
made in 1780, 1781, and 1782. Certainly there 
was no lack of religious faith in that body of Chris- 
tian patriots. 

Before considering the convention of 1787 and 
the constitution then drafted and afterward ratified 
by the several states — that instrument which has 
been characterized as the most remarkable unin- 
spired document ever struck from the human brain 
by a single blow — I invite you to take account of 
some adverse currents that came in like a flood 
upon our country. 

The independence of the colonies was achieved 
at a dreadful cost: the threatened loss of our na- 
tional faith. With the triumph of arms there came 
the fall of public morals. The French allies 
proved to be dangerous friends. They fought for 
our success in the field, but they poisoned our na- 
tional faith. They injected the virus of an ag- 
gressive and unblushing infidelity into our country 



Christianity and the Nation. 151 

that came near working its ruin. Its blight was 
seen and felt everywhere. The churches suffered, 
homes were destroyed, colleges were poisoned, 
the Sabbath was desecrated, and public morals 
were polluted. The churches reported '' the lam- 
entable decay of vital piety, the degeneracy of 
manners, the want of public spirit, and the general 
prevalence of vice and immorality." Some public 
men became blatant and blasphemous in their infi- 
delity. Gen. Dearborn, afterward Secretary of 
War in Jefferson's cabinet, is reported to have 
pointed on one occasion at a Christian church and 
said: '' So long as those temples stand we can not 
hope for order and good government." Passing 
a church-building m Connecticut on another occa- 
sion, he remarked with scornful tone and sneering 
lip: ''Look at that painted nuisance." Edmund 
Randolph became a deist, but afterward returned 
to his evangelical faith. Thomas Jefferson be- 
came very liberal in his creed, probably a unita- 
rian, but never lost a firm faith in God and his 
providence. And many others felt the contagion. 
But the great body of patriots and statesmen stood 
firmly by the faith of their fathers. Patrick Henry 



152 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

said he abhorred infidelity, and wrote a book, 
though never pubHshed, in reply to Paine 's **Age 
of Reason." And so Washington and others 
boldly resisted the deadly plague. 

Devereux Jarrett, of Virginia, drew a vivid 
sketch of the moral degeneracy of the times, and 
charged it to *' the prevalence of the spirit of the 
French Revolution/' The General Assembly of 
the Presbyterian Church in 1798 sent out a pasto- 
ral letter, full of alarm and entreat}^: ''We per- 
ceive with pain and fearful apprehension a gen- 
eral dereliction of religious principle and practise 
among our fellow-citizens, a visible and prevailing 
impiety and contempt for the laws and institutions 
of religion, and an abounding infidelity which, in 
many instances, tends to atheism itself. The 
profligacy and corruption of the public morals 
have advanced with a progress proportioned to 
our declension in religion." 

Infidel clubs were organized, and publications 
like Paine's ''Age of Reason" were scattered 
broadcast over the land. The colleges of the 
country became the hotbeds of a shallow but 
noisy skepticism. But a reaction, after a time, 



Christianity and the Nation. 153 

set in, led by Dr. Dwight, President of Yale Col- 
lege, and others of great influence in Church and 
State, and this great nation, born of religious 
convictions and built by Christian faith and prin- 
ciple, swung safely back to the integrity of her 
divine inheritance. 

When, in 1800, President John Adams received a 
letter from Germany, proposing to send over to this 
country '* a company of schoolmasters, painters, 
poets, etc., all of them disciples of Thomas Paine," 
he made prompt and emphatic reply as follows: 
" I had rather countenance the introduction of Ariel 
and Caliban with a troupe of spirits the most mis- 
chievous from the fairy-land." And in a procla- 
mation shortly thereafter, setting forth the dangers 
threatening the young republic, he thus rean- 
nounced the national faith : ' ' The most precious in- 
terests of the United States are still held in jeopardy 
by the hostile designs and insidious arts of a foreign 
nation (France), as well as by the dissemination 
among them of those principles subversive of the 
foundation of all religious, moral, and social obli- 
gations, that have produced incalculable mischiefs 
and misery in other countries." 



154 Christianity and the American Commonzvealth. 

The one man whose coming to America was 
more to be deplored than any other was Thomas 
Paine. His political writings gave him fame and 
influence, but his coarse and vulgar skepticism 
made him in the end the shunned and despised of 
all American decency. Though regretting the 
occasion for any reference to such moral and po- 
litical vileness, as a study in personal irreligion 
and an object-lesson to the young who may be 
tempted to toy with the faiths of the soul, I here 
introduce a graphic description of his last days by 
an excellent historian. That horrible old age and 
despised memory are the bitter harvest of his own 
skeptical sowing. 

McMaster, in his '* History of the People of 
the United States," thus describes Tom Paine: 
"We doubt w^hether any name in our Revolu- 
tionary history, not excepting that of Benedict 
Arnold, is quite so odious as the name of Thomas 
Paine. Arnold was a traitor; Paine was an infi- 
del. . . . Since the day when the '*Age of 
Reason" came forth from the press the number 
of infidels has increased much more rapidly than 
before that book was written. The truth is, he 



Christianity and the Nation. 155 

was one of the most remarkable men of his time. 
It would be a difficult matter to find anywhere an- 
other such compound of baseness and nobleness, 
of goodness and badness, of greatness and little- 
ness, of so powerful a mind left unbalanced and 
led astray by the worst of animal passions. . . . 
Of all humankind he is the filthiest and nastiest, 
and his disgusting habits grew upon him with his 
years. In his old age, when the frugal gifts of 
two states which remembered his good work had 
placed him beyond immediate want, he became a 
sight to behold. It was rare that he was sober; 
it was still rarer that he washed himself, and he 
suffered his nails to grow till, in the language of 
one who knew him well, they resembled the claws 
of birds. What gratitude was he did not know.'' 
I come now to study the federal charter — the 
"supreme law of the land" — adopted by the his- 
toric convention of 1787 in the city of Philadel- 
phia, and its relation to the Christian religion. 
Was any action taken by that grave body of great 
statesmen that was intended directly or indirectly 
to repudiate the pronounced Christian faith of the 
colonial fathers? Their courage had been tested 



156 Chris fianity and the American Commonwealth. 

in the storm of war, and now their ambitions could 
only be inspired by the loftiest patriotism — the 
completion of a work so gloriously begun. James 
Madison, who preserved the debates of that mem- 
orable convention, and who v^as conspicuous in its 
deliberations, said that *' there never was an as- 
sembly of men, charged with a great and arduous 
trust who were purer in their motives, or more 
exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object 
committed to them, than were the members of the 
federal convention of 1787 to the object of devi- 
sing and proposing a constitutional system which 
should best supply the defects of that which it was 
to replace, and best secure the permanent liberty 
and happiness of their country." 

George Washington sat in the President's chair, 
and all the deliberations of that serious body were 
as solemn as the synod of a great Church in a time 
of spiritual crisis. The burdens of a nation and 
the centuries were upon their already chafed and 
weary shoulders. Great were the difficulties they 
had to meet, and most momentous were the prob- 
lems they had to solve. One graphic and pathetic 
scene in that convention is painfully suggestive 



Christianity and the Nation. i^'j 

of the tremendous burden of anxiety that some- 
times threatened the defeat of all their patriotic 
counsels and the loss of all the splendid fruits of 
victory on the field of battle. I refer to the ap- 
pearance of Dr. Franklin — a veteran of eighty- 
three years of age — and his memorable appeal for 
prayer. The speech of Benjamin Franklin in the 
constitutional convention, supporting a motion for 
daily prayers to God in the body, is a notable his- 
toric fact, when we consider the great man who 
uttered it and the greater occasion which suggest- 
ed it. It was an hour of gloom. Divided opinion, 
sectional animosities, and some personal estrange- 
ments threatened to defeat the patriotic purpose of 
their solemn assembling. But little progress had 
been made, and many began to fear that differ- 
ences were irreconcilable and agreement was im- 
possible. In that hour Dr. Benjamin Franklin, 
not supposed to be evangelical in his opinions, 
arose, but, too feeble to stand long on his feet, 
asked his colleague to read the manuscript speech 
he had prepared. From that address I take these 
suggestive sentences: 

** In the beginning of the contest with Great 



15S Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had 
daily prayer in this room for the divine protection. 
Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they were gra- 
ciously answered. All of us who were engaged 
in the struggle must have observed frequent in- 
stances of a superintending Providence in our fa- 
vor. To that kind Providence we owe this happy 
opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of 
establishing our future national felicity. And have 
we now forgotten that powerful Friend ? Or do we 
imagine that we no longer need his assistance? 

*' I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I 
live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth : 
that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a 
sparrow can not fall to the ground without his no- 
tice, is it possible that an empire can rise with- 
out his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the 
sacred writings that, ' except the Lord build the 
house, they labor in vain that build it." I firmly 
believe this, and I also believe that without his 
concurring aid we shall succeed, in this political 
building, no better than the builders of Babel." 

Though the motion was not adopted, and the 
secret sessions were not opened and closed with 



Christianity and the Nation. 159 

invocation and benediction, influential members 
were careful to assign other reasons than indiffer- 
ence to religion or lack of faith in the superin- 
tending providence of God. 

Now inasmuch as in the constitution of the 
United States the name of God is not mentioned, 
and the references to religion are rather negative 
than positive, it has been charged that the Amer- 
ican commonwealth has an atheistical organic law. 
That question we will now investigate, for the 
Christian character of our nation is involved there- 
in. And in the study of the same one fact should 
be borne in mind : ' ' The constitution did not create 
a nation or its religion and institutions,^'' It was 
framed for the better protection of those already 
existing, and under a government of the people, 
by the people, and for the people. 

The constitution of the United States provides 
that '"'No religious test shall ever he required as 
a qualification to any office or -public trust under 
the l/jtited States J' ^ 

The first amendment to that constitution reads 
as follows: '''Congress shall make no law respect- 
ing an establishment of religion^ or prohibiting 



A 



1 60 Christianity and the American Commonzvealth. 

the free exercise thereof; or abridging the free- 
dom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the 
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the 
government for a redress of grievance." 

This Article VI., paragraph 3, abolishes all re- 
ligious tests in the conduct of civil affairs, and se- 
cures the freedom and independence of the State 
from ecclesiastical domination and interference. 
But the first amendment, adopted in response to 
the demand of many of the states as a condition 
of their ratifying the constitution itself, is a more 
positive declaration, and constitutes what is known 
as a bill of rights. This is the full and absolute 
guarantee of perfect religious liberty. Many of 
ithe principles embodied in the constitution have 
been handed down from the days of Magna 
Charta, but, as Dr. Philip Schaff has observed, 
**it was left for America to abolish forever the 
tyranny of a State religion, and to secure the most 
sacred of all rights and liberties to all her citizens 
— the liberty of religion and the free exercise 
thereof." Thus the right of individuality and the 
sovereignty of the conscience were vindicated and 
protected from outside interference, and the power 



Christianity and the Nation. i6i 

was forever withheld from the federal government 
to invade the inner sanctuary of the human soul. 

The purpose of that article was not to renounce 
Christianity or give countenance to infidelity or 
any pagan religion, but to exclude all rivalry 
among Christian denominations and ** prevent any 
national ecclesiastical establishment which should 
give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the 
national government." It was not antichristian, 
but antisectarian. It would not favor one branch 
of the Church of Christ over another. The Epis- 
copalians were the predominant sect in some 
states, the Presbyterians in others, the Congrega- 
tionalists in others, the Quakers in at least one, 
while several were nearly evenly balanced numer- 
i-cally in others. It was eminent statesmanship, 
therefore, to eliminate ecclesiastical ambitions and 
sectarian jealousies from the civil government, 
by giving the same reverent recognition and sacred 
protection to all alike. All Churches were put on 
an equal footing before the supreme law of the 
nation. ** Liberty of all is the best guarantee of 
the liberty of each." 

I know of no more critical and luminous state 
11 



1 62 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

ment of the true religious purpose of the framers 
of the constitution than these words by an able 
writer on constitutional law: ** Consistent with 
themselves, the people of 1787 meant by the Fed- 
eral arrangement nothing but a new and larger 
organization of government on -principles already 
fa7niliar to the country. The state governments 
were not broad enough for national purposes, and 
the old confederation was deficient in central 
power. It was only to remedy these two defects, 
not of principle but of distributive adjustment, that 
the public mind addressed itself; innovation, to 
any other end, was never thought of, least of all 
in reference to religion, a thing utterly apart from 
the whole design. So that, admitting that the 
constitution framed on that occasion does not in 
terms proclaim itself a Christian document, what 
then? Does it proclaim itself unchristian? For 
if it is merely silent in the matter, law and reason 
both tell us that its religious character is to be 
looked for by interpretation among the people who 
fashioned it, a people Christian by profession and 
by genealogy; what is more, by deeds of funda- 
mental legislation that can not deceive." 



Christianity and the Nation. 163 

And from the highest authorities, that might be 
multiplied almost indefinitely, we are left in no 
doubt that this was the view taken by all the con- 
stitutional fathers, and which found clear expres- 
sion in our organic law. The supreme care was 
not to restrain, but to encourage and increase the 
rapid spread and lasting sway of our Christian 
religion throughout the American commonwealth. 

The only limitation ever placed upon the largest 
assertion of religious liberty by the national gov- 
ernment was the passage of a law against plural 
marriage which is a tribute to Christian religion. 
This law, so necessary to the sanctity of the home 
and the purity of society, has its origin and divine 
imperative only in the New Testament. So the 
enactment of that prohibition is an inspiration of 
the ethics of Christianity. And no appeal to any 
religious tenet or belief is allowed to contravene 
that express statute which came first from the Man 
of Galilee. 

The validity and constitutionality of that law has 
been tested before the Supreme Court of the 
United States, and sustained at every point. The 
case came up from the territory of Utah, the ac- 



164 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

cused pleading the doctrines of the Mormon 
Church and the constitutional guarantee of relig- 
ious liberty as his defense. As the opinion rendered 
is the first judicial definition of the bounds of the 
religious liberty guaranteed by the constitution, I 
shall quote a few passages therefrom. The opin- 
ion of the court was delivered by Chief Justice 
Waite, and is as follows; 

'* Laws are made for the government of actions; 
and while they can not interfere with mere relig- 
ious beliefs and opinions, they may with prac- 
tises. Suppose one believed that human sacrifices 
were a necessary part of religious worship. Would 
it be seriously contended that the civil govern- 
ment under which he lived could not interfere to 
prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously be- 
lieved it was her duty to burn herself upon the 
funeral pile of her dead husband, would it be be- 
yond the power of the civil government to prevent 
her carrying her belief into practise ? 

** So here, as a law of the organization of socie- 
ty under the exclusive dominion of the United 
States, it is provided that plural marriages shall 
not be allowed. Can a man exercise his practises 



Christianity and the Nation. 165 

to the contrary, because of his religious belief? 
To permit this would be to make the professed 
doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of 
the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to 
become a law unto himself. Government could 
exist only in name under such circumstances." 

It is an interesting historic fact also that the Na- 
tional Congress has officially favored and ap- 
proved the Holy Scriptures, and the authorized 
Protestant version and revision of the same. 

The Continental Congress in 1782 and the 
United States 1882, just one century apart, passed 
specific resolutions in regard to the Holy Scrip- 
tures. Bibles becoming very scarce during the 
war of the Revolution, Congress was petitioned 
to publish the book. The petition was not grant- 
ed, on account of the difficulty in procuring types 
and paper, but authority was given to import twen- 
ty thousand copies from Europe. And that same 
Congress appointed a committee to examine the 
first English Bible published in America. The 
committee submitted it to examination by the two 
chaplains, Rev. W. White and Rev. George Duf- 
field, and, on their recommendation, Congress ap- 



1 66 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

proved "the pious and laudable undertaking" 
and recommended it *'to the inhabitants of the 
United States." 

In 1882 Congress passed an act exempting from 
customary duties over two thousand copies of the 
Revised Version of the Holy Scriptures, printed 
on the university presses of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge. 

And in an ordinance adopted by Congress July 
13, 1787, for the government of the Northwest 
territory, a section then under entire control of 
the federal authority, it is declared that ^^ Religion, 
morality, and knowledge are necessary to good 
government and the happiness of mankind." 

This, then, is a Christian nation, constructed by 
a Christian people, and for Christian ends, their 
religion the common law of the land. The 
Christian religion is so inwrought into the laws of 
the United States that they can only be wisely in- 
terpreted by the light of revelation. A distin- 
guished American jurist has said that "the best 
features of the common law, if not derived from, 
have at least been improved and strengthened by, 
the prevailing religion and the teachings of the 



Christianity and the Nation. 167 

sacred Book, especially those that regard the fam- 
ily and social relations." And Chief Justice 
Cooley, in his great work on '* Constitutional Lim- 
itations," has given this opinion, which has all the 
weight of the highest judicial authority: *'The 
Christian religion was always recognized in the 
administration of the common law; and so far as 
that law continues to be the law of the land, the 
fundamental principles of that religion must con- 
tinue to be recognized in the same sense and to 
the same extent." 

Daniel Webster, the great '* expounder of the 
constitution," in the celebrated Girard will case 
before the Supreme Court of the United States, 
in February, 1844, most ably advocated the doc- 
trine that Christianity is the common law of this 
nation. He sought to set aside the munificent de- 
vise of Stephen Girard for the establishment of a 
college in Philadelphia, on the ground that the 
testator had discriminated against the Christian 
religion, even going so far as to provide that no 
minister of the gospel should ever be admitted with- 
in the walls of the institution. With imperial elo- 
quence he discussed the vital connection between 



1 68 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

religion and education, and triumphantly showed 
that he who would profanely divorce the two made 
a ruthless assault upon the common law of the 
land. Though somewhat lengthy, I must quote 
the following splendid passage : 

" It is the same in Pennsylvania as elsewhere: 
the general principles and public policy are some- 
times established by constitutional provisions, some- 
times by legislative enactments, sometimes by ju- 
dicial decisions, sometimes by general consent. 
But however they may be established, there is 
nothing that we look for with more certainty than 
the general principle that Christianity is a part of 
the law of the land. This was the case among 
the Puritans of New England, the Episcopalians 
of the Southern States, the Pennsylvania Quakers, 
the Baptists, the mass of the followers of White- 
field and Wesley, and the Presbyterians; all 
brought and all adopted this great truth, and all 
have sustained it. And where there is any relig- 
ious sentiment amongst men at all, this sentiment 
incorporates itself with the law. Everything de- 
clares it. The massive cathedral of the Catholic ; 
the Episcopalian church, with its lofty spire point- 



Christianity and the Nation. i6^ 

ing heavenward; the plain temple of the Quaker; 
the log church of the hardy pioneer of the wilder- 
ness; the mementoes and memorials around and 
about us; the consecrated graveyards, their tomb- 
stones and epitaphs, their silent vaults, their mold- 
ering contents — all attest it. T/ie dead f rove it as 
well as the living. The generations that are gone 
before speak it, and pronounce it from the tomb. 
We feel it. All, all proclaim that Christianity, 
general, tolerant Christianity, Christianity inde- 
pendent of sects and parties, that Christianity to 
which the sword and fagot are unknown, general, 
tolerant Christianity, is the law of the land." 

In a celebrated case in the state of New York, 
in which a man was charged with blasphemy, the 
Supreme Bench held the validity and constitu- 
tionality of the law. Chief Justice Kent, the dis- 
tinguished author of the *' Commentaries on Amer- 
ican Law," delivered the opinion of the court. 
He said: . . . ^^We are a Christian feo^le, 
and the morality of the country is deeply ingraft- 
ed upon Christianity. . . . This declaration 
(of the New York constitution in favor of relig- 
ious liberty) never meant to withdraw religion in 



1 yo Christianity and the American Commonzvealth. 

general, and with it the best sanctions of moral 
and social obligation, from all consideration and 
motion of law. To construe it as breaking down 
the common law barriers against licentious, wan- 
ton, and impious attacks upon Christianity itself 
would be an enormous perversion of its mean- 
ing." 

Judge Theodore W. Dwight, a distinguished 
jurist, and for man}^ years the learned dean of the 
Columbia Law School, New York, gave this able 
opinion on the subject: *' It is well settled by de- 
cisions in the courts of the leading states of the 
Union — e.g-., New York, Pennsylvania, and Mas- 
sachusetts — that Christianity is a part of the com- 
mon law of the state. Its recognition is shown in 
the administration of oaths in the courts of justice, 
in the rules which punish those who wilfully blas- 
pheme, in the observance of Sunday, in the prohi- 
bition of profanity, in the legal establishment of 
permanent charitable trusts, and in the legal prin- 
ciples which control a parent in the education and 
training of his children. One of the American 
courts (that of Pennsylvania) states the law in this 
manner: 'Christianity is and always has been a 



Christianity and the Nation. 171 

part of the common law of this state — Christianity 
without the spiritual artillery of European countries 
— not Christianity founded on any particular relig- 
ious tenets, not Christianity with an established 
church and tithes and spiritual courts, but Chris- 
tianity with liberty of conscience to all men.' 
The American states adopted these principles 
from the common law of England, rejecting such 
portions of the English law on this subject as were 
not suited to their customs and institutions. Our 
national development has in it the best and -purest 
elements of historic Christianity, as related to the 
government of states. Should we tear Christianity 
out of our law, we would rob our law of its fairest 
jewels, we would deprive it of its richest treasures, 
we would arrest its growth, and bereave it of its 
capacity to adapt itself to the progress in culture, 
refinement, and morality of those for whose benefit 
it properly exists." 

The influence of Christianity is of final authorit}^ 
in the proceedings and decisions of our courts of 
justice. The testimony of witnesses is rejected if 
the solemnity of an oath is not sustained by belief 
in the God of heaven. The judge is compelled to 



172 Christianity and the American Commonzvealth. 

inquire: *'Do you believe in a God? Do you be- 
lieve in a future state of rewards and punish- 
ments?" If the witness answers in the negative, 
his testimony is incompetent in the determination 
of any judicial question, however trivial or impor- 
tant. Thus the administration of law depends 
upon our holy religion — confidence in human ve- 
racity — a confidence necessary to the business of 
the state and the judicial determination of ques- 
tions in controversy — grounds upon religious char- 
acter. The state has to resort to the individual 
conscience. A judicial oath supposes a conscience 
sensitive to the issues of an eternal judgment, to 
give it solemnity and moral weight. 

And this doctrine has been fundamental in the 
jurisprudence and governmental administration 
of all nations. It is a fact that when infidelity 
had destroyed the national faith of Greece, and 
** there was no god to swear by," her officials 
became corrupt, and the proud republic tottered 
to its ruin. Rome prospered as the religious con- 
victions of the people were most acute and the 
authority of conscience was most respected. If a 
Roman soldier violated his oath, even death in 



Christianity and the Nation. 173 

battle did not arrest judgment against him. His 
crime was thought to pursue him into the spirit 
world and there " confront him at the tribunal of 
his infernal judges, Minos, Rhadamanthus, and 
^acus, whose sentence it would receive to eternal 
perdition." No wonder, under the discipline of 
such faith in the rewards of the future, Rome at- 
tained to imperial grandeur. 

And the official acts of the Presidents of the 
United States, in their proclamations appointing 
days of thanksgiving or fasting, and in their ad- 
dresses to the people, have paid reverent tribute to 
our national faith. 

The inaugural address of George Washington, 
as the first President of this young republic, 
breathes the humblest and holiest spirit of depend- 
ence upon God, and expresses the nation's faith 
in his all- wise guidance and care. He recognizes 
the hand of God in the formation of the govern- 
ment, and prays for his continued direction and 
perpetual benediction. He says: **It would be 
peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, 
my fervent supplication to that almighty Being 
who rules over the universe, who presides in the 



1 74 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

councils of nations, and whose providential aid can 
supply every human defect, that his benediction 
may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of 
the people of the United States a government in- 
stituted by themselves for these essential purposes, 
and may enable every instrument employed in its 
administration to execute with success the func- 
tions allotted to his charge. In tendering this 
homage to the great Author of every public and 
private good, I assure myself that it expresses your 
sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my 
fellow citizens at large less than neither. No peo- 
ple can be bound to acknowledge and adore the 
invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men 
more than the people of the United States. Every 
step by which they have advanced to the character 
of an independent nation seems to have been dis- 
tinguished by some token of providential agency." 
And in the closing sentences of this able and 
patriotic address the ''father of his country" 
thus refers again to the subject which seemed to 
be the burden of his great soul — the nation's de- 
pendence upon Almighty God for past achieve- 
ments and all future glory: '' Having thus impart- 



Christianity and the Nation. 175 

ed to you my sentiments as they have been av\^a- 
kened by the occasion which brings us together, I 
shall take my present leave; but not without re- 
sorting once more to the benign Parent of the hu- 
man race, in humble supplication that, since he 
has pleased to favor the American people with op- 
portunities for deliberating in perfect tranquillity, 
and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled 
unanimity on a form of government for the secu- 
rity of their union, and the advancement of their 
happiness; so his divine blessing may be equally 
conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate 
consultations, and the wise measures on which the 
success of this government must depend." 

And in his matchless farewell address, a master- 
ful state paper that will be read with increasing 
reverence and appreciation to the last generation 
of American patriots, an address which had all the 
sanctity and solemnity of a last will and testament, 
he speaks again with the favor of an apostle of his 
country's indebtedness to our holy religion. He 
says: ''Of all the dispositions and habits which 
lead to political prosperity, religion and morality 
are indispensable supports. In vain would that 



1 76 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

man claim the tribute of patriotism who should 
labor to subvert these great pillar^ of human hap- 
piness, these firmest props of the duties of men 
and citizens. The mere politician, equally with 
the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them. 
A volume could not trace all their connections 
with private and public felicity. Let it simply 
be asked: Where is the security for property, 
for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious 
obligation desert the oaths which are the instru- 
ments of investigation in courts of justice? And 
let us with caution indulge the supposition that 
morality can be maintained without religion. 
Whatever may be conceded to the influence of re- 
fined education on minds of peculiar structure, 
reason and experience both forbid us to expect 
that national morality can prevail in exclusion of 
religious principle.'' 

Days of thanksgiving have been officially and 
regularly appointed, by all the Presidents from 
Washington to McKinley, except Jefferson and 
Jackson, who, not from a sense of indifference but 
because of expressed doubt as to whether they had 
authority, under, the constitution, declined to make 



Christianity and the Nation. 177 

such appointments. So b}^ this and other official de- 
liverances, and by the legislative history of the na- 
tional and state governments, we are impressed with 
the utterance of Gold win Smith: *^ Not democracy 
in America, but free Christianity in America, is the 
real key to the study of the people and their insti- 
tutions." 

And that the faith of our fathers yet abides 
among the sons of the mighty is happily illustrated 
in this suggestive incident: When a committee of 
the Lake Mohawk Conference visited President 
Cleveland, a few years ago, in the interest of the 
Indians, the President, among other things, gave 
expression to this wise sentiment: "No matter 
what I may do ; no matter what you may do ; no 
matter what Congress may do; no matter what 
may be done for the education of the Indian, after 
all, the solution of the Indian question rests in the 
gospel of Christ." * 

And to this volume of convincing testimony, the 
testimony of American statesmen, scholars, histo- 
rians, and divines, I beg to give the calm judg- 
ment of two great political writers on the other 

side of the Atlantic. 
12 



1 7^ Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

Alexis de Tocqueville, in his "Democracy in 
America," one of the ablest and most philosophic 
discussions of our political institutions by any 
foreigner, thus refers to Christianity as the forma- 
tive and mightiest influence in our national life: 
*' There is no country in the whole world in 
which the Christian religion retains a greater in- 
fluence over the souls of men than in America, 
and there can be no greater proof of its utility, 
and of its conformity to human nature, than that 
its influence is most powerfully felt over the most 
enlightened and freest nation of the earth. . . . 
Religion in America takes no direct part in the 
government of society, but it must, nevertheless, 
be regarded as the forefnost of the -political insti- 
tutions of that country, for if it does not impart a 
taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of free in- 
stitutions. I am certain that the Americans hold 
religion to be indispensable t9 the maintenance of 
republican institutions. This opinion is not pe- 
culiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it 
belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of 
society." 

And a more recent foreign student of our na- 



Christianity and the Nation. 179 

tional institutions, the distinguished statesman, 
Prof. James Bryce, of England, in his "American 
Commonwealth," reaffirms with emphasis the 
generous judgment of the eloquent Frenchman. 
He says: "It was religious zeal and religious 
conscience which led to the founding of the New 
England colonies two centuries and a half ago — 
those colonies whose spirit has in such large 
measure passed into the whole nation. Religion 
and conscience have been a constantly active force 
in the American commonwealth ever since." 

I return, therefore, to the proposition announced 
at the beginning of this lecture — the separation of 
Church and State was not the separation of the 
nation from religion. Christianity is now, and 
ever has been, the firmest pillar of our civil and 
political institutions. The State needs far more 
the protection of the Church than the Church 
needs the protection of the State. On the faith 
of our fathers, I do believe, rests the hope of this 
republic. 



LECTURE V. 



Christian Education in the American Common- 
wealth. 

(181) 



LECTURE V. 

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE AMERICAN 
C OMMON WEAL TH. 

I SHALL now speak on a subject not strictly 
necessary to the logical connection of the line 
of argument we have pursued, but strikingly illus- 
trative of the principles advocated and the conclu- 
sions reached. Our studies have disclosed the 
fact that this is a Christian nation — that Christian- 
ity is wrought into the very bone and fiber and 
blood of our civil and social institutions, and, in- 
deed, has become the common law of the land. 
In this lecture we will proceed with our investiga- 
tion of Christian influences upon our national in- 
stitutions, and study Christian Education in the 
American Commonwealth. 

This will not be a plea for Christian education 
or a discussion of the great principles involved 
therein, which should always have the preemi- 
nence in Church and State. I shall not consider 
the claims of education upon American Christians 
and patriots, and its vital relation to the progress 

and prominency of our grand republic. It is 

(183) 



184 Christianity and the American Commonzvealth. 

true that the economic, industrial, political, and 
moral well-being of the nation are largely de- 
pendent upon the character and extent of the edu- 
cation provided for the people. But into that 
broad and inviting field we will not enter to-da3^ 
The purpose of this lecture is to briefly sketch 
the history of Christian education in the Ameri- 
can commonwealth, and let the eloquent facts be 
their own convincing argument. It is well for us 
to be reminded whence came our great education- 
al systems and enterprises, and by whom they 
have been so carefully nurtured and guided. We 
should know to whom the America of to-day is so 
great a debtor. If it shall appear that the much- 
lauded educational spirit of our country was gen- 
erated and nourished by the Christian Church, 
and that the right training of American youth 
has been almost entirely promoted by the Church 
and ministry, that fact ought to serve as an effi- 
cient corrective of certain fatal tendencies among 
some modern educators and their friends. We 
ought to be very hesitant in consenting to an elim- 
ination of the influences that have created and or- 
ganized the vast educational system of this nation. 



Christian Education. 185 

The spirit of Protestantism is the spirit of en- 
lightenment, and has ever been the promoter and 
pioneer of education. It is a fact of history, that 
with every revival of religion there has been a re- 
vival of letters. A quickened spiritual life in the 
Church has inspired the nation with an i.^creased 
mental activity. Dr. Dorchester has suggestively 
observed that: ''The great Reformation allied 
itself with the universities. Wyclif, Tyndale, 
Luther, Melanchthon, Farel, and Calvin turned 
their lecture-rooms into preaching-places, and 
Wittenburg, Heidelburg, the great Sorbonne, 
Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, with their 
thousands of students, made those countries Prot- 
estant." 

We had reason to expect, therefore, that the 
sturdy reformers who became the first colonists of 
America would be the ardent friends of the best 
education. A large proportion of the m.inisters 
who accompanied the brave pioneers were men of 
the highest culture, and some had become distin- 
guished in scholarship and literature. Within ten 
years after the coming of Winthrop and his noble 
company not less than twenty thousand English- 



I S6 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

men made their homes in this new world. Among 
them were about eighty ministers, fully one-half 
of whom were graduates of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge. These men, of course, became the lead- 
ers in all educational movements, and to them and 
their colaborers and successors this great republic 
is indebted for the ardent spirit and the elaborate 
schemes of our national enlightenment. They 
very early championed a system of schools, as 
they said, '* to the end that learning may not be 
buried in the graves of our forefathers in Church 
and commonwealth." 

The fathers were wise enough to discern the 
certain peril of divorcing learning from religion. 
They accepted the maxim of Bacon, that "In 
knowledge without love there is ever something of 
malignity," and provided that the schools they 
established should be the homes of serious and 
sanctified learning. They insisted that intellec" 
tual culture and spiritual principle must be bound 
in immortal wedlock. God hath joined them 
together, and it is fatal profanity to put them 
asunder. 

Those were very straightforward and luminous 



Christian Education. 187 

words of Prof. Huxley on this momentous subject. 
A better statement I have not seen: *'I hold that 
any system of education which attempts to deal 
only with the intellectual side of a child's nature, 
and leaves the rest untouched, will prove a delu- 
sion and a snare, just as likely to produce a crop 
of unusually astute scoundrels as anything else. 
In my belief, unless a child be taught not only 
morality but religion, education will come to very 
little. I believe, further, that, in the present cha- 
otic state of men's thoughts on these subjects, the 
only practical method of not altogether excluding 
religion from the education of the masses is to let 
them read the Bible, and permit the many noble 
thoughts and deeds mirrored there to sink into 
their hearts." 

The purpose of this lecture is to show that edu- 
cation in the American commonwealth, whether 
in primary, secondary, or collegiate schools, 
** owes," as a historian has properly acknowl- 
edged, ** almost everything to religion." 

The common school system of the United 
States, now so highly prized and so distinguish- 
ing a feature of the educational scheme of the na- 



iS8 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

tion, owes its origin to the Church. The Chris- 
tian colonists first devised and fostered it, and 
made distinctive religious teaching therein the 
chiefest concern. At Dorchester, where the plan 
was adopted in 1645, elaborate rules were given 
for the government of the school. A few must be 
here given : 

** 4. Evry second day in the weeke he shall 
call his schollers togeither betweene 12 and one of 
the Clock to examine them what they have learned 
on the Saboath day preceding at wch tyme also 
he shall take notice of any misdemeanor or out- 
rage that any of his schollers shall have committed 
on the Saboath, to the end that at somme conve- 
nient tyme due Admonition and Correction may be 
administered by him according as the nature and 
qualitie of the offence shall require, at wch sayd 
examination any of the Elders or other Inhabit- 
ants that please may bee present, to behold his re- 
ligious care herein, and to give there Counten- 
nance and approbation of the same. 

** 7. Every six day of the weeke at 2 of the 
Clock in the afternoone, he shall catechise his schol- 
lers in the principles of the Christian religion, 



Christian Education. 189 

either in some catechisme wch the Wardens shall 
provide and present, or in defect thereof in some 
other. 

*'8. And because all man's indeavor wthout 
the blessing of God must needs bee fruitlesse and 
unsuccessful, theirfore, It is to be a chief prte 
of the schoolmrs religious cars to commend his 
schollers and his Labours amongst them unto God 
by prayer morning and evening, taking care that 
his schollers doe revrendly attend during the 
same." 

This is said to be the first public provision in 
the world for a free school supported by a direct 
taxation on the inhabitants of the town. The 
teacher was required to equally and impartially 
review and instruct the children who had a right 
to attend, ** whither there parents bee pore or 
rich ;" and it was left to the '* discretion of the Eld- 
ers and * seven men ' for the time being whether 
maydes shall he taught vjith the boyes or not^ 

The New Haven colony, through the " general 
court,'*' as early as 1641, voted '*that a free 
schoole be set up this towne, and our pastor, Mr. 
Davenport, together with the magistrates, shall 



1 90 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

consider whatt yearly allowance is meet to be 
given to itt out of the common stock of the towne, 
and allso whatt rules and orders are meet to be 
observed in and about the same." In a recent 
history of education in Connecticut there is this 
reference to that religious beginning of public 
schools in the colony: '* We note here, in this 
early record of a Connecticut school, the super- 
vision by the clergyman which has continued until 
the present, causing even now the clergymen in 
a village to be chosen school visitors." Other 
towns followed this good example. In 1646 
Guilford had a school, with Rev. John Higginson 
as teacher, and shortly thereafter Milford '' made 
provision in a comfortable way." 

A plan for public education was adopted in the 
very beginning of the Pennsylvania colony. It 
found conspicuous mention in the first draft of 
proprietary government drawn up by William Penn 
in 1682. The founding of Philadelphia the next 
year was signalized by the establishment of a 
school. To an amended charter granted by Penn 
in 1711 there is this preamble: ^'•Whereas, the 
prosperity and welfare of any people depend, in a 



Christian Education . 191 

great measure, upon the good education of youth 
and their early introduction in the -princifles of 
true religion and virtue, and qualifying them to 
serve their country and themselves by breeding 
them in reading, writing, and learning of languages 
and useful arts and sciences, suitable to their sex, 
age, and degree, which can not be effected, in any 
manner, so well as by erecting public schools for 
the purpose aforesaid." 

And so, if time allowed, I could show that a 
similar religious spirit, like another angel of the 
annunciation, proclaimed the being and mission of 
the schools in all the colonies. The story of one 
is the history of all. To the Church, the school 
owed its birth ; and to the minister, the children of 
almost every parish had to look for intellectual 
training as well as spiritual instruction. 

The academic schools of the colonies sprang 
from the same powerful religious conviction. In 
1647, less than twenty-seven years after its settle- 
ment, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay 
colony passed the following order, the preamble 
of which indicates the high Christian purpose of 
these devout sons of a pure Protestantism: 



1 92 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

*'It being one chief object of the old deluder, 
Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the 
Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in 
an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by per- 
suading from the use of tongues, that so at least the 
true sense and meaning of the original might be 
clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming devices; 
that learning may not be buried in the grave of our 
fathers in the Church and commonwealth, the 
Lord assisting our endeavors. 

** It is therefore ordered that every township in 
this jurisdiction, after the Lord has increased them 
to the number of fifty householders, shall then 
forthwith appoint one within their town to teach 
all such children as shall resort to him to write 
and read; whose wages shall be paid, either by 
the parents or masters of such children or by the 
inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the 
major part of those that order the prudentials of 
the town shall appoint; provided, those that send 
their children be not oppressed by paying much 
more than they can have them taught for in other 
towns; and it is further ordered^ that when any 
town shall increase to the number of one hundred 



ChHstian Education. 193 

families or householders, they shall set up a gram- 
mar-school, the master thereof being able to in- 
struct youth so far as they may be fitted for the 
university; provided, that if any town neglect the 
performance hereof above one year, that every 
such town shall pay five pounds to the next school 
till they shall perform this order." 

Such was the original spiritual purpose of gram- 
mar-schools, now so important a feature of the 
elaborate educational system of the United States. 
And for two centuries or more most all of such 
secondary institutions of the country were under 
the direction and instruction of ministers of the 
gospel representing the different evangelical de- 
nominations. 

The Virginia colony, as early as 1619, recom- 
mended *'that each town, borough, and hundred 
should procure by just means a certain number of 
children (natives), to be brought up; that the most 
towardly of these should be fitted for college." 
Thus it will be seen that almost at the beginning 
of the Jamestown settlement efforts were made to 
provide ample educational facilities for the grow- 
ing colony, and that these efforts were largely mis- 
13 



194 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

sionary. That these schools did not multiply more 
rapidly, as among the towns of New England, was 
because of the scattered agricultural population, 
and not from lack of appreciation of the largest 
and best culture. But the conditions making it 
impossible to have so many town schools, the want 
was largely supplied by the employment of private 
tutors. 

Nor was the first of these schools planted in the 
East, as has been persistently claimed. The first 
free grammar-schools — that is, schools in which 
Latin was taught, and which were supported, in 
part, at least, by the proceeds of land, etc. — were 
established in Charlestown, Va., in 1621; in Bos- 
ton, 1636; in Salem, 1641; and in most towns of 
New England within a few years after their settle- 
ment. 

I wish, in this connection, to correct a false 
statement of history and deny the unfounded de- 
duction from such misrepresentation. The reply 
of Sir William Berkeley, the governor, to a petition 
of the Virginia colonists has been quoted as the 
educational expression of the *' lords of planta- 
tions" themselves, and made to type all the colo- 



Christian Education . 195 

nies of the South. They are represented as not 
only being indifferent, but hostile to general educa- 
tion, while the pioneers of New England were 
giving equal and careful attention to the school 
and the Church. Now, as a matter of fact, the 
colonists presented a petition to the governor, Sir 
William Berkeley, praying that liberal and general 
provision be made for the education of their chil- 
dren. That petition the upstart of a governor, 
recently arrived from England, resisted and denied 
in the following language: ** I thank God there 
are no schools nor printing, and I hope we shall 
not have them these one hundred years ; for learn- 
ing has brought disobedience and heresy and sects 
into the world, and printing has divulged them, 
and libels against the best government. God keep 
us from both ! " Now, so far from this being the 
sentiment of the colonists, their *' apathy or hostil- 
ity in regard to popular schools," as one writer 
states it, was the formal denial of their earnest re- 
quest. But the intelligent and far-seeing pioneers 
were not to be foiled in their educational demands, 
and steps were at once taken to establish William 
and Mary College. 



196 Christianity and the American Commonzvealth. 

In Maryland and the Carolinas early legislative 
efforts were made ** to establish schools for the 
convenient instruction of youth," and taxes were 
levied for their maintenance. The first constitu- 
tion of Georgia provided that every county should 
** establish and keep a school at the public ex- 
pense." The preamble of the act establishing the 
first free school in Charleston, S. C, set forth 
** the necessity that a free school be erected for 
the instruction of youth in grammar and other arts 
and sciences, and also in the principles of the 
Christian religion; and that several well-disposed 
Christians, by their last will, had given several 
sums of money for the founding of a free school." 
It was provided, also, that the teacher ** should be 
of the religion of the Church of England, and 
capable of teaching the Latin and Greek lan- 
guages." Instructors were legally enjoined to see 
that the children "receive in their tender years that 
sense of religion which may render it the constant 
principle of their lives and actions." 

The first school established in Georgia was by 
the Moravians, and was chiefly designed for the 
religious instruction of the Indians, The second 



Christian Education. 197 

was the famous Orphan House, built by the elo- 
quent George Whitefield, intended to meet " the 
educational wants of the plantation." It was the 
great ambition of the wonderful preacher to make 
that estate ''a seat and nursery of sound learning 
and religious education." 

An interesting volume might be written on the 
'* Famous Academies of America." Equally with 
the great colleges do they deserve historic recogni- 
tion. But the story of every famous academy would 
be the life of its great teacher, who, in almost every 
instance, was a scholarly and self-denying minister 
of the gospel. 

In referring to the fact that secondary instruc- 
tion in America owes almost everything to religion, 
Dr. Baird shows also its special indebtedness to 
ministers of the gospel. Writing as late as 1843, the 
distinguished historian says: *' A large proportion 
of the grammar-schools and academies in the 
United States, whether incorporated or not, are 
under the direction and instruction of ministers of 
the gospel of different evangelical denominations. 
These ministers, in some cases, devote their whole 
time to the work of academical instruction. In 



^^S Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 



other cases they also have the charge of a church or 
congregation, and as they perform the double du- 
ties of pastor and head of a grammar-school, they 
have usually an assistant teacher in the latter." 

But, if possible, even more remarkable is the 
religious genesis of American colleges. For more 
than two hundred years almost every collegiate 
institution in the land owed its existence purely to 
religious motives, and was under the immediate 
control of some religious denomination. And the 
few established independently or by the state have 
relied upon Christian sympathy for support, and 
most of them have been presided over by devout 
ministers carrying the credentials of the Church 
of God. 

Harvard College, the first institution for the 
promotion of higher education in the American 
colonies, was born of religious convictions. The 
colonists said: ** It is an object near our hearts 
to have an able and learned ministry when those 
of the present age are laid in their graves." And 
the location of the institution was determined by 
the same sacred consideration. Cambridge was 
selected, as the records show, because ** of the 



Christian Education . 1 99 

energy and searching character of Mr. Shepherd's 
preaching, and his skill in detecting errors." It's 
founder was a minister of the gospel — the Rev. 
John Harvard, whose name it bears — and to it he 
generously gave one-half of his estate, £800, and his 
library of three hundred and twenty volumes. The 
mottoes upon two of the ancient seals of the college 
are **In gloriam Christo " and ** Christo et Eccle- 
siae . ' ' As indicating the jealous concern for the spir- 
itual culture of the college, this was adopted among 
the early rules: ** Let every student be plainly in- 
structed and earnestly pressed to consider well 
that the main end of his life and studies is to know 
God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, and, 
therefore, to lay Christ in the bottom as the only 
foundation of all sound knowledge and learning." 
It is a significant fact that during the first one 
hundred years of Harvard's history a little more 
than three-sevenths of its graduates were ministers 
of the gospel. And for the first one hundred and 
thirty-four years of its existence ever}^ President 
was a minister except one, the Hon. John Lev- 
erett, A.M., F.R.S., who served from 1707 to 
1725, a period of eighteen years. 



300 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

The second institution for advanced learning in 
the colonial period was William and Mary College, 
in Virginia, established in 1693. But that was not 
the first effort to plant such a school in that in- 
viting section. Shortly after the Jamestown col- 
onists landed and provided humble houses for 
their protection from the storms of winter and the 
heat of summer, a movement was inaugurated 
looking to the establishment of a college. It was 
to have an ambitious name — the ** University of 
Henrico'' — and ten thousand acres of land were 
laid off for an endowment. The Bishop of Lon- 
don heartily approved the worthy project, and 
gave to it the munificent sum of £1,000. The 
Rev. Mr. Bargrave, the clergyman at Henrico, 
donated his library. And, as preparatory to this 
larger enterprise, plans were devised for building 
an academic school at St. Charles City, to be 
known as the East India School, in honor of the 
officers and crew of an East India ship, who made 
to it the first and largest contribution. But these 
praiseworthy enterprises, conceived of a true mis- 
sionary spirit, came to an untimely and tragic end 
by the terrible Indian massacre of March, 1622. 



Christian Education. 201 

And so frequent were these savage wars, and so 
many were the disasters to the struggling colony, 
that years of disappointment had to pass before 
the ardent dream of the early cavaliers was real- 
ized. 

In 1660 the Colonial Assembly passed an act 
**for the establishment and endowment of a col- 
lege," but not until the coming of another minis- 
ter, the Rev. Dr. James Blair, twenty -eight years 
thereafter, did the movement find a successful 
champion. The statement is that he *' was deeply 
affected by the low state of learning and piety in 
the colony, and, as the most effective means of 
elevating both, resolved, if possible, to secure the 
establishment of a college." Under his leader- 
ship active measures were inaugurated, the religi- 
ous purpose of the movement being heartily sec- 
onded by the colonists, who resolved ** that for 
the advance of learning, education of youth, 
supply of the ministry, and promotion of piety 
there be land taken upon purchases for a college 
and free school, and that there be, with as much 
speed as may be convenient, housing erected 
thereon for entertainment of students and schol- 



202 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

ars/* The governor and council headed a sub- 
scription which soon amounted to £2,500, and 
Dr. James Blair was commissioned to visit Eng- 
land in its behalf. The General Assembly, in ma- 
king request for a royal endowment of the pro- 
posed college, stated that it was ** to the end that 
the Church of Virginia may be furnished with a 
seminary for ministers of the gospel, and that the 
youth may be piously educated in good letters and 
manners, and that the Christian faith may be 
propagated amongst the Western Indians to the 
glory of Almighty God." 

Their Majesties, William and Mary, received 
Dr. Blair most cordially, endorsed the enterprise 
most heartily, and the crown gave him £2,000 and 
twenty thousand acres of land and a penny a 
pound on tobacco exported from Virginia and 
Maryland." The Colonial Assembly gave, as the 
statute read, ** a duty on furs for its plentiful en- 
dowment," and Jefferson says that it also gave ** a 
duty on liquors imported." So that ** from these 
sources it received upward of £3,000 communihus 
annisy The charter was granted February 14, 
1692, the Bishop of London being appointed 



Christian Education. 203 

Chancellor; Dr. James Blair, President; and, in 
honor of their Majesties, was given the name of 
William and Mary. The professors were to be 
members of the Church of England, and all stu- 
dents were to be taught the catechism. 

Yale College was founded by the Congrega- 
tionalists, in response to a formal action by a 
synod of the churches held at New Haven in 
1698, and was afterward given its name in honor 
of Elihu Yale, of London, governor of the East 
India Company, who made to the institution a 
generous donation. In the preamble of the char- 
ter granted by the Colonial Legislature, the high 
spiritual aims of the devout projectors is thus 
stated: '* Several well disposed and Publick spir- 
ited Persons, of their sincere Regard to & zeal 
for upholding & Propagating of the Christian 
Protestant Religion by a succession of Learned & 
Orthodox men, have expressed by Petition their 
earnest desires that full Liberty and Privilege be 
granted unto certain Undertakers for the found- 
ing, suitably endowing, & ordering a Collegiate 
School within his Majties Colony of Connecticut, 
wherein Youth may be instructed in the Arts & 



204 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

Sciences, who through the blessing of Almighty 
God may be fitted for Public employment both in 
Church and Civil State." 

And with exceeding jealous care did the minis- 
ters of Connecticut guard and guide the orthodox 
teachings of that college destined to such a mag- 
nificent history. Every President of the college 
for a hundred j^ears was a minister of the gospel, 
and only a few times to the present has that apos- 
tolic succession been interrupted. 

These were among the rules of Yale College in 
1720: 

*' Seeing God is the giver of all wisdom, every 
scholar, besides private or secret prayer, wherein 
all we are bound to ask wisdom, shall be present 
morning and evening at public prayer in the hall 
at the accustomed hour, which is to be ordinarily 
at six of the clock in the morning, from the tenth 
of March to the tenth of September, and then 
again to the tenth of March at sunrising, at be- 
tween four and five of the clock, all the year long. 

'*No scholar shall use the English tongue in 
the collegiate school with his fellow scholars un- 
less he be called to public exercises proper to be 



Christian Education. 205 

attended in the tongue, but scholars in their cham- 
bers and when they are together shall talk Latin." 

Columbia College, known until 1784 as King's 
College, was founded by the Episcopalians. The 
early Presidents were largely supported by Trin- 
ity Church, being made assistant rectors of the 
same. In 1735 Trinity Church granted to the 
college a valuable piece of ground, and among 
the conditions stipulated was *' that the President 
should always be a member of the Episcopal 
Church, and that the college prayers should be 
drawn from the Prayer Book. The consideration 
was ten shillings and an annual rental of a pepper- 
corn." 

But into the detailed history of America's early 
colleges, the limits of this discussion will not allow 
me to enter. Each contains most valued facts in 
support of my earnest contention. These bare 
statements confined to the colonial period of 
America, and embracing all the early collegiate 
privileges provided for the people, indicate the 
measure and source of our indebtedness, and are 
eloquently suggestive of the educational policy 
that should be sacredly conserved: 



2o6 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

College. When Founded. By Whom. 

Harvard 1638 Congregationalists. 

William and Mary 1693 Episcopalians. 

Yale 1700 Congregationalists. 

Princeton 1746 Presbyterians. 

University of Pennsylvania . 1747 Individuals and State. 

Columbia 1759 Episcopalians. 

Brown University 1764 Baptists. 

Rutgers 1770 Dutch Reformed. 

Dartmouth 1770 Congregationalists. 

Hampden Sydney 1775 Presbyterians. 

The University of Pennsylvania, the first insti- 
tution in the United States not estabhshed by a 
Christian denomination, was largely indebted to 
the Churches for moral and financial support, and 
has always been under Christian control. Prof. 
Thompson, an alumnus and a member of the Fac- 
ulty of that historic institution, thus refers to its 
history, *' Even my own university, the first in 
America without any definite denominational con- 
nection, owed to the Christian ministry both the 
ablest of its teachers and the bulk of its students, 
and it recognized its close relations to the Churches 
by giving the senior minister of each denomina- 
tion a seat in its Board of Trustees, while the citv 
churches took up a collection every year for its 



Christian Education. 207 

support;" and Dr. Dorchester, in his history of 
" Christianity in the United States," says that the 
University of Pennsylvania, when first established, 
gathered its resources **by subscription in Eng- 
land, South Carolina, Jamaica, and Philadelphia. 
Thomas Penn, one of the proprietors, was the 
largest contributor." 

And in the charter of your University of Geor- 
gia, granted in 1785, these words occur: *'A11 
officers appointed to the instruction and govern- 
ment of the university shall be of the Christian 
religion." Alas that in these latter days they 
should have been stricken from that time-honored 
instrument!* 

The curricula of these early colleges gave prom- 
inence to theology and the study of the Holy 
Scriptures in the original languages. **At Har- 
vard, Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, as well as 
New Testament Greek and catechetical theology, 
were taught. ... In Yale, from the first, the 
Hebrew of the Old Testament was translated into 
Greek, and the Latin New Testament into Greek at 
the beginning of every recitation. The Assembly's 

*They remained until 1877. 



2o8 Christianity and the American Commonwealth . 

Catechism in Latin was recited every Saturday 
evening; Ames's ** Medulla Theologise " Saturday 
mornings, and his ** Cases of Conscience" Sunday 
mornings. Every student was required to study 
these things. There were also, from an early day, 
college lectures in ecclesiastical history, and a pro- 
fessorship in divinity. At Harvard one had to be 
able to render the originals of the Old and New 
Testaments and resolve them logically, withal be- 
ing of godly life and conversation, in order to re- 
ceive the first degree. 

The standard of scholarship in those colonial 
colleges was, with the exception of mathematics, 
not low. Their founders and first promoters 
being graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, they 
sought to make scholars here equal to those in the 
old world. The following, requirement for en- 
trance into the first college class at Harvard would 
hardly be insisted upon by any university of to- 
day: **When any scholar is able to understand 
Tully, or such like classical author, extempore and 
make and speak true Latin in verse and -prose; 
. and decline perfectly the paradigms of 
nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue, let hiiri 



Christian Education. 209 

then, and not before, be capable of admission into 
the college." 

These facts are given to show that the only 
friends of higher education in the early days of 
America were Church people, and it was Church 
money that established and endowed those institu- 
tions. Not only so, but almost every professors' 
chair for many years was filled by a minister of 
the gospel. They were our national educators. 
The academies and '* old field schools" were 
nearly all taught by clergymen. 

But in these latter days we hear much of '' lib- 
eral thought," and a growing demand of the peo- 
ple that their sons shall be educated in non-de- 
nominational institutions— colleges unfettered by 
"narrow orthodoxy" and uncontrolled by Chris- 
Churches. Let us see if this is so. In the ad- 
mirable and exhaustive report of the United States 
Commissioner of Education, in 1884, I find these 
figures : 

Total number of colleges 370 

Denominational colleges 309 

Undenominational colleges 61 

Of the undenominational colleges, 23 are state 

institutions. 
14 



2 1 o Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

Denominational students 25,948 

Undenominational students 6,819 

Total 32,767 

In 1830 denominational colleges were 71 per 
cent, of the whole; in 1884 they were Si, per cent. 
In 1830 the denominational students were 74 per 
cent, of the whole; in 1884 they were 79 per cent. 

So that according to these facts the demand 
seems rather for the increased care of the Churches 
— that the training of American youth shall be un- 
der the guidance of the Christian conscience, and 
under the immediate supervision of the Christian 
denominations. This accentuates the duty of the 
Church, and is an eloquent appeal for redoubled 
effort and increased vigilance and improved equip- 
ment. 

The history of education in the American com- 
monwealth abundantly sustains the statement of 
Dr. Candler that '*from Harvard, the oldest, down 
to the latest established, there is hardly an institu- 
tion of learning in the country that did not have 
its birth in and its growth from Christianity." 
Under the fostering care of the Church they were 
built — every stone '^laid in denominational mor- 



Christian Educatian. 211 

tar." That man, therefore, is innocent of the ele- 
mentary facts of history who declaims against or 
seeks to undervalue education by the Church ; and 
that legislative assembly evidences a lamentable 
lack of acquaintance with the sacred spirit by 
which our early government was baptized which 
discriminates against the educational institutions of 
the Church — the nurseries of our purest patriot- 
ism, the guardians of our dearest rights, the strong- 
holds of our nation's destiny. Whatever may be 
one's opinion as to the sphere of public education, 
the State can not ignore or deny its educational 
indebtedness to the Church without peril and 
scandal. The more friendly the attitude of the 
State to the institutions of the Church and the more 
liberal her policy in fostering the same, the more 
perfectly will she safeguard the forces that insure 
her increasing prosperity. The State has no worse 
enemy than the small politician who, under the 
plea of guarding the institutions of the common- 
wealth, would embarrass, by hostile legislation, 
the schools of learning fostered by the Christian 
Church. 

The cry of liberalism in education is really the 



212 Christianity and the American Commonwealth. 

first note of the Commune. It is the spirit which, 
if left to grow, will pull down the Vendome col- 
umn and lay ruthless hands upon the ark of the 
Lord. Christian education is not narrow. It does 
not fetter thought, but emancipates mind. It does 
not impede investigation, but flings wide the doors 
of the largest mental hospitality, and gives the 
broadest commission to 'intermeddle with all 
knowledge." For the small demagogue, whose 
cry is liberalism, and who has '* no language but 
a cry," we ought to have the commiseration due 
to congenital innocence. 

The maxim of the Puritans, **The proper nurse 
for Moses is Moses' mother," might be applied 
most aptly to the cause of education in the Amer- 
ican commonwealth. Our school and college sys- 
tems are the creations of Christianity. It was not 
until the Christian Church fought and won the 
battle for education that the world discovered its 
vast excellience and counted its institutions worthy 
of munificent endowment. 

Victor Hugo has said that ''he who opens the 
door of the schoolhouse closes the door of the 
jail." That depends on who keeps the school and 



Christian Education. 213 

what is taught there. The schoolhouse may be- 
come a place for polishing fiends and graduating 
outlaws. It is not the number but the character 
of our schools; not how many children attend, 
but who teaches them, and what they are taught, 
that tj^pe and measure their influence for good. 

I do not think it extravagant to insist that the 
right education of American childhood is to de- 
termine the destiny of this great republic. There 
is profound philosophy and historic truth in that 
old proverb v/hich says: ^'What you sow in the 
school you reap in the nation." Correct princi- 
ples sown in the soil of the young mind, cultiva- 
ted by wise, well-equipped teachers, and ripened 
by the sun of a gracious Providence, will produce 
a manhood and womanhood that will sacredly pre- 
serve the past and guarantee the glory of the fu- 
ture. 



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